


Till the Sun Breaks Down

by poetikat



Series: And Death Shall Have No Dominion [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Original Character Death(s), Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-28
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:21:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 59,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetikat/pseuds/poetikat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When nightmares become real and civilization seems like a distant memory, what's left for the survivors?  Kurt, Santana and Dave struggle to survive in a country devastated by a zombie outbreak.  Canon compliant through 2.18</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day One

_WARNINGS: violence and multiple character deaths._

***

The first zombie Kurt kills is named Mark.

Kurt's at Hummel Tire and Lube after school on Friday to change out his back right tire, which picked up a nail on the way to school that day. He notices it in the parking lot as he's about to head home, and he makes a last minute change of plan to get it fixed before it goes flat on him at an inconvenient moment. It won't take long, he knows. He won't even need to bother his dad's Friday guy for help. He'll change it for a new one and hang out for a while, talking to Mark and getting his hands dirty.

It'll be fun.

He has the Navigator up on a jack and the tire off and is ready to roll over the new one when he hears a scream. He scrambles to his feet in time to see a pasty, dead-eyed Mark grab the chubby middle aged blonde woman who'd come in for a lube job and sink his teeth into her fleshy shoulder. She screams louder, more out of pain than terror this time, and as she struggles to get away, Kurt stands frozen in disbelief. His dad's employee, the man he'd come to think of as a friend of sorts, is a zombie.

But zombies aren't supposed to be real. They're supposed to be the scary things that make your heart try to jump out of your chest when you're watching a movie at night. They're fictional. They don't exist. Except – there's Mark. Eating their customer.

She screams again, and Kurt runs to his dad's desk. Strapped to the underside, he knows, is a preloaded shotgun. He'd asked about it once when he was younger, and his dad had told him that after a series of break-ins at auto repair shops in the area, he'd wanted to make sure no one stole any parts from his store. It's there to scare them off, mostly, but if it's needed, there's ammo already loaded just in case. He tears off the Velcro straps, grabs the shotgun, and rushes over.

This is Mark. Mark is a zombie. This isn't Mark anymore. A brief, cynical thought crosses his mind. He would never be more grateful to Sue Sylvester and his stint on the Cheerios for making him just ruthless enough to do this. And he'd never hate her more for it.

The woman screams hysterically, and Kurt, hands trembling, gets as close as he safely can, raises the shotgun, and pulls the trigger. The butt of the shotgun slams back into his shoulder violently, and Kurt almost drops it, gasping at the sudden pain. Mark falls to the ground like a marionette whose strings were cut, a big, messy, red hole in the side of his head. The woman falls too, screaming and screaming and screaming, blood pooling under body as she goes white with shock. He drops to his knees at her side and takes her hand, smoothing back her hair.

"It's over now," he says shakily.

She looks up at him with terror in her eyes. "Thank you," she says, her voice hoarse.

"What's your name?" he asks.

"Lou-Ann," she says. "Lou-Ann Baker."

Kurt forces a smile. "It's nice to meet you, Lou-Ann."

"I'm going to die, aren't I?" she asks.

He thinks about lying. He thinks about the blood soaking the knees of his new fern green pants. He thinks about her chattering teeth and her hand, cool and clammy in his own. "Yes," he says. "I'm so sorry."

She lets out an awful, choking sob. "I don't want to die."

"I know," he says helplessly. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

"Stay with me," she says, gripping his hand tightly.

"I will," Kurt says. "I promise."

He doesn't know how long he kneels there, holding her hand as she cries. She tells him between ragged sobs that her husband won't be home until seven, that she's supposed to pick up her daughter from soccer practice in an hour, that they're having her in-laws over for dinner tomorrow, that her son is going to be in the school play at his elementary school. Her words slowly taper off. Her hand goes lax in his, and her chest rises and falls and fails to rise again. "I'm so sorry," he tells her once more as he stands up.

He wants so desperately to curl up in a ball and sob like Lou-Ann did, clutching his knees to his chest and waiting for the nightmare to be over. But he needs to keep it together. If he falls apart now he's as good as dead. So on unsteady feet, he goes and fetches the largest toolbox in the shop, the big case of first aid supplies in the storage closet, and the box of shotgun shells his dad keeps locked in the bottom drawer of his desk. These go on the second row of seats on the driver's side. Next come the empty gallon containers for gasoline, five in total, which he stashes in the trunk. Then, finally, he gets his replacement tire and swaps it out for the bad one, keeping the shotgun close at hand. He can't go home to check on his family if he can't drive his car.

***

Dave's about to head out to hit some baseballs at the park to burn off some stress when he notices that things on his street aren't right. Like, really not right.

Three of his neighbors are shuffling down the street toward him, slack-jawed and arms outstretched. They look – shit, they look dead. And hungry. They look like –

Fucking hell. They look like zombies. He goes from 'they look like zombies' to 'zombies aren't real' to 'no, those are definitely zombies' in the space of a second, and he hefts his bat grimly. There's no fucking way he's getting eaten by a seventy-two year old cat breeder. He doesn't care how good her casseroles are. Mrs. Hadley's teeth aren't getting anywhere near him.

As soon as she's within batting reach he swings out as hard as he can, and the blow knocks her to the ground. He hears a crack and guesses it's her hip. Mr. Larsen is the next to approach. Dave hits him square across the face, and he stumbles back a few paces, jaw skewed out of alignment and lips bleeding. That's good. The harder it is for Mr. Larsen to bite him, the better. He turns his attention to Mr. Costa and bashes him on the side of his head with all the force he can muster, and Mr. Costa topples over, skull caved in.

It isn't enough to kill any of them, he knows. He's fucked if he can't destroy their brains. Totally, utterly fucked. Mrs. Hadley is already crawling across the pavement, eyes fixed on his ankles, and Mr. Costa is struggling to regain his footing.

Someone is missing. Wait. Shit. Where the fuck is Mr. Larsen?

Inhumanly strong hands grip his arm, and he has only a moment to panic, sheer terror taking the wheel as he twists in Mr. Larsen's hold. Then a shot rings out, and Dave is suddenly released as Mr. Larsen drops to the ground, an enormous hole in the back of his head. Another deafening shot fills the air, and Mr. Costa drops where he stands. Dave spins around to see who his savior is.

"Get in," Kurt Hummel snaps from behind the barrel of a shotgun as he leans out the driver's side window of his Navigator.

Dave stares. "Hummel?"

"GET IN!" Kurt yells.

Dave wastes no time, running around to the passenger side and flinging himself in. He slams the door behind him and flips the lock as fast as he can. Kurt drops the shotgun in his lap and tears down the street, running over Mrs. Hadley in the process. "What the fuck is going on?" he asks. "Zombies? Seriously?"

"That's what it looks like," Kurt says.

Dave clutches his bat. "Zombies don't exist," he says.

"You think?" Kurt says sarcastically. "And here I thought 'Dawn of the Dead' was a documentary."

"Jesus, Hummel, I was just asking," Dave says.

He sneaks a look at Kurt from the corner of his eye. His unlikely rescuer is wearing practical clothes that Dave would never have guessed he even owned. The dark jeans and brown leather jacket look wildly out of place on him. He takes a closer look and doesn't like what he sees at all. Kurt's knuckles are white where his fingers are wrapped around the steering wheel. His face is pale, his mouth a bloodless line above his chin. His eyes look haunted.

"What happened?" Dave asks.

"Don't ask me that," Kurt says. He takes a hand off the steering wheel and tosses his phone into Dave's lap. "Call your parents. See if they're alive. Go to messages and send a mass text to everyone in Glee. Your friends, too. Tell them to meet us at Poling and North Kemp in half an hour."

See if they're alive. God. His parents. He fumbles with Kurt's phone and dials his dad's number with clumsy fingers. Ring, ring, ring, ring. _"This is Paul Karofsky's cell phone. Please leave a message, and I'll get back to you shortly."_

"Dad?" Dave says. "Dad, it's me. If you're there – if you're okay. Just. Please call back. We're gonna be at Poling and North Kemp waiting for everyone. Just call back. Please be okay. I love you." He ends the call and dials his mom's phone.

It doesn't even ring. It doesn't even go to voicemail. "Oh god," he says blankly. He presses a trembling fist to his lips and squeezes his eyes shut.

"I know," Kurt says, and for the first time he sounds sympathetic. "I know. But you have to keep it together. Please. There will be time to freak out later. Right now, all we have are our wits. Send the text. We'll see who's still…who's made it out."

"That's cold," Dave says.

"It's what we need to do," Kurt shoots back. "Now please, if you care at all about my friends and yours, send the text."

"I care," Dave mutters, and he navigates to Kurt's messages. He fills in the first six lines with the names of Kurt's contacts and shoots off a quick message.

 **If ur alive then get  
to poling and n. kemp  
in half hour to meet  
up w/us.**

The next message goes to the other half of the Glee Club. Then he opens one more, filling in Azimio and Rashad's numbers. "Want me to text your folks?" he asks.

Kurt draws an unsteady breath. "It's not – they won't be there."

"Shit," Dave whispers. "That's. Fuck, I'm sorry." Kurt doesn't seem to even hear him. "What about Finn?"

Kurt's head makes a tiny jerk from side to side. "Send the last text," he says.

Dave presses 'send' on autopilot. "How fucked do you think we are?"

"I think that if I think about it I'm going to kill myself," Kurt says, eerily calm. "So let's just focus on getting to our meeting point and not contemplate the likelihood that this isn't just happening in Lima." He rolls down Dave's window. "My brother told me that when Puck got his license the two of them went around one night driving through neighborhoods and knocking over mailboxes. If you see any zombies, swing away."

"You bet." Dave sticks his bat out the window, hands tight around the taped grip. "If it's – you know, bad. How set are we?"

"First aid, a stocked toolbox, shotgun, ammunition, canned and dried food, a twelve pack of one liter bottles of water, five gallons of gasoline and a full tank, three changes of clothes for me, and a large quilt," Kurt says. "When I got home after I found out about the zombies I threw everything useful in the back of the car and hightailed it out of there." He pauses. "And a tire iron. We have a tire iron, too."

"So we're not gonna die," Dave sums up. He spots a zombie as they're barreling down the street, and he swings out, connecting with its head with a loud crunching noise.

"That's the plan," Kurt says.

Dave nods and then realizes Kurt can't see the motion. "I like that plan."

"So do I."

***

They aren't the first to arrive at the intersection. As Kurt pulls up, he spots a familiar truck parked off to the side, two figures standing by the tailgate holding a bat and a rifle, respectively. He pulls over behind them and kills the engine.

"Thank god," he says as he jumps out of his car, shotgun in hand. "I was afraid we were the only ones."

"We're hard to kill," Puck says with forced bravado, lowering the rifle.

"Damn right," Lauren says. She looks past him to Karofsky, who's followed Kurt over. "How'd you two hook up?"

Kurt half expects him to spin their encounter so that he comes out looking like a hero, but Karofsky says simply, "He saved my life."

"Didn't know you had it in you," Puck says to Kurt. "Hell, to be honest I didn't think you'd made it until I got that text."

"It goes to show that you should never underestimate me," Kurt says. Behind Puck, he can see a pre-teen girl peering out the open window on the driver's side. "Who's with you?"

"My mom and sister," Puck says. "I got 'em in the truck before things really went to hell. Lauren was over so we grabbed what we could and bailed."

"We're going to hit the next town over for more supplies," Lauren says. "We don't have enough to feed the four of us for long."

The duffel bag full of nonperishable food flashes through his mind. They could hand some over, split it, help their friends survive just that much longer. "I know what you mean," he says instead. "We'll be raiding a grocery store as soon as we get to one." His stomach churns at his ruthlessness. These are his friends. There's a girl in there who's not even in middle school.

But they need the food if they're going to have any hope at all at surviving this. And after what had happened – after what he'd had to do – there wasn't much left that he wouldn't do to have a fighting chance. "We definitely need to get water," he says, and at least that's the truth. "You'll need water more than you'll need food. Get those big ten gallon bottles if you can, and a first aid kit."

"Hit up a gun shop," Dave says. "Believe me, a bat does fuck all when there's more than one of 'em."

"Good advice," Puck says. "Thanks, dude."

A Ford Fusion races up the road toward them, and the driver pulls over across the street with a sharp jerk of the wheel. Santana bursts out of the backseat, followed at a slightly slower pace by Mike, Tina, Rachel, and a handsome black man.

"FUCK!" Santana throws herself at Puck, pounding his chest with her fists. "GOD FUCKING HELL SON OF A BITCH! _FUCK_!"

He passes the rifle to Lauren and grabs Santana's wrists. "What the fuck happened?" he demands.

She struggles to get loose, shirt bloody and eyes wild. "FUCK YOU LET ME GO!" she screams at him.

Tina looks at Kurt, tears streaming down her face. "They got Brittany," she says.

Karofsky swears and pulls Santana free, crushing her to his chest in a tight hug. He stoically rides out her violent rage, just holding her and rocking ever so slightly back and forth. "I'm so sorry," he murmurs. "Christ, Santana, I'm so sorry. I've got you. I'm sorry."

"Fuck you," she chokes out, but she stops hitting him and clenches the front of his jacket in her fists and buries her face in his shoulder, heavy sobs wracking her thin back.

Kurt wipes his eyes on the sleeve of his jacket. They're all in tears, even the stranger. He closes his eyes, taking a moment to center himself. Not the time. He'd grieve when it was safe. When he opens his eyes again he sees everyone but Santana looking at him expectantly, as if he held all the answers. He's momentarily startled – why would they look to him? But it makes sense after a fashion. He's the one who had the text message sent, after all, and if that makes him the de facto leader for the short time they were together, then so be it. He'd do his best not to let them down.

He looks at Mike, who seems to be the most level headed of the group. "Do you know if anyone else made it clear of the city?"

Mike shakes his head and tucks Tina under his arm, tight against his side. "I called people. It's bad. Most of them didn't even pick up. Mercedes –" His voice breaks. "Mercedes told us to run."

Mercedes. No, not Mercedes. Not his beautiful, brilliant, hilarious Mercedes. He pinches the bridge of his nose hard to keep the tears at bay. Hers was another name to add to his growing list.

"We lost Hiram," the handsome stranger says, and Rachel takes his hand like a frightened child, looking lost and bewildered. Rachel's other dad, then. Leroy.

"My parents are gone," Mike says. "Tina's too."

"I lost my dad," Lauren says. "So it's just me now." She blinks rapidly behind her thick glasses and bites her lower lip.

Puck puts his arm around her ample shoulders. "You have my family," he says.

"What about your family, Karofsky?" Tina asks from within the shelter of Mike's embrace.

"I don't know," Karofsky says. "My dad didn't pick up, and my mom – I'm pretty sure she's, um." He looks away.

"What about Finn?" Rachel asks.

Of course she'd ask that. Kurt drops his head and wishes fervently that he could just wake up from this hell, safely tucked away in his bed and ready to start a new, less torturous day. "He was bitten," he tells them all. "He stayed behind." He sticks his free hand in his jacket pocket and crosses his fingers, hoping she doesn't ask for details.

Luck is on his side. "He's always been so brave," Rachel says, her eyes welling up with a new wave of tears.

"He really has been," Kurt agrees.

"Your parents," Mike says hesitantly. "Are they…"

"I lost them as well," Kurt says. His heart is a heavy weight in his chest. "Blaine called me before I found Karofsky. He said goodbye." And 'I love you.' And 'Stay strong.' And 'Live.'

"I'm sorry," Tina says. "For all of us."

"And for everyone who didn't make it," Puck agrees quietly.

A somber silence falls over them as the enormity of the situation they've found themselves in makes itself painfully clear. Thirteen people were in Glee today. Seven made it out. Kurt had only stumbled across Karofsky by chance, bringing the number of students up to eight. One of Rachel's dads survived, which made nine. And only Puck still had his entire family.

Less than a dozen people out of thirteen students – fourteen, counting Karofsky – and their parents and siblings reached their meeting place.

"I hate this," Rachel says. "I hate it. We can't sit shiva for my dad, we can't even bury him…we're leaving our friends and families behind to rot."

Kurt hates it as much as she does. He hates it with all his heart. But there is no time for grieving. Not yet. Not now. "We don't have a choice," he says, rather than offer comfort. "If we're going to survive, we have to do what's necessary."

"How the hell are you keeping it together like this?" Puck asks. "This is just – shit, Kurt. It's not like you."

"Apparently it is," Kurt says. "We can't afford unnecessary drama or histrionics. On a sliding scale of stubbed toes to zombie outbreak, we're at zombie outbreak. I hurt as much as you do. I just can't deal with it now."

"He's right," Lauren says. "We need to look out for ourselves before we can think about all the crap that just happened."

Kurt looks around the group. "What are you planning to do?" he asks Leroy.

"We have family in Marin," he says, "And Mike has an aunt who lives in Half Moon Bay. We're going out west to see if things are better there."

"And if they aren't?" Kurt asks.

"Then we'll steal a houseboat and live on the water," Tina says. "It'll be safer than staying on land."

"We're heading north," Puck says. "I know the border won't keep 'em out, but the population's lower up in Canada. Less people mean less zombies."

Leroy looks at Puck, then at Kurt. "Can either of you take Santana?" he asks. "I'd want to have her with us, but she's, well. I think she's going to be a danger to herself and to us by extension. She's too angry to think straight right now."

Puck, looking heartbroken, shakes his head. "I can't. There isn't enough room in the truck, for one. And I have to look out for my family. I don't want her getting herself killed, but I don't want her getting my baby sister killed either."

"We'll take her," Karofsky says. Kurt turns around, and Karofsky gives him a pleading look from over Santana's head. "We don't have family to look out for. And fuck, she's got no one else if you guys are gonna leave her stranded."

Part of Kurt rebels against the idea of bringing along someone who's bound to be a loose cannon. But Karofsky's right. Of all of them, he and Kurt have no one to protect and look out for. And an angry, violent Santana could be very, very useful when it comes to killing zombies.

"Exactly," Kurt says. "Santana comes with us."

"Thank goodness," Leroy says, letting out a sigh of relief.

"Gotta take your girlfriend with you, right?" Puck says. He raises an eyebrow at Karofsky. For the first time since last Tuesday he doesn't look disgusted when he brings it up. It makes sense. There's too much to worry about to bother holding on to grudges and animosity.

Karofsky and Santana both flinch, and Santana burrows deeper into Karofsky's arms. "She's – we're –" Karofsky says, stumbling over his words. He shoots Kurt another pleading look.

"We're facing what might be the collapse of society as we know it," Kurt says. "There's really no point in lying anymore."

"Lying about what?" Rachel asks.

Karofsky looks at their ragged group warily. "I guess." He ducks his head and asks Santana, mouth by her ear, "Is it okay with you?" She makes what looks like a tight, tiny nod against his sternum, and he says, sounding extremely reluctant, "We're not actually. You know. Together. We were, uh. Bearding for each other."

For each other? That's news. It's not entirely unexpected, though.

"Wait, so you're gay?" Puck asks incredulously. "The whole self-hating closet case thing's too cliché to be real."

"Well, better late than never," Kurt says. "Moving on. We don't have time to harangue him for his utter hypocrisy, as tempting as it is."

"Mm-hm." Lauren looks up at the sky. "We should get going before it gets dark."

At her words, Rachel darts over and clings to Kurt fiercely. "I'll miss you," she says brokenly.

Kurt hugs her back just as tightly, ignoring the pain in his shoulder as she buries her face in his neck. "I'll miss you too," he says. "Stay safe."

Suddenly everyone is moving toward one another, hugging and clapping shoulders and murmuring private goodbyes. Rachel is pulled away to be replaced by Puck, who thanks him under his breath for the text. Mike and Tina hug him together, telling him to be careful, to look out for Santana, to not give up hope. Lauren's hug lifts him off the ground, and she advises him with a patently false smirk to not do anything she wouldn't do. Leroy shakes his hand and says to take care.

They're slow to separate, but they go back to their vehicles, looking over their shoulders again and again as they leave Kurt behind with Santana and Karofsky.

"Looks like it's just us now," Karofsky says. "What next?"

He's still in charge, then. As much as he'd like to toss the keys to Karofsky and tell him that it's up to him, he knows that the responsibility of keeping them together and safe is best left in his hands. Santana's too reckless, and Karofsky, while not nearly as stupid as Kurt had originally assumed, probably doesn't have it in him to make the hard decisions.

Kurt hates having to make the hard decisions.

He hates knowing that he can make them at all.

"Next we head to Wapakoneta," Kurt tells his companions. "We need more than just a shotgun and a bat, and we desperately need more water if we're going to survive this. There's bound to be a gun store, and it's sufficiently small enough that we'll be able to deal with the zombies more efficiently than we could in Lima. But first, we need to take care of something else. David, there's a plaid jacket on top of the quilt in the back seat. Get it for me, please."

"Sure," Karofsky says, and opens the door to fetch the jacket.

Kurt lays the shotgun down and turns his attention to Santana. She's slumped against the driver's side door, arms wrapped around her body as she shivers. "Santana," he says, softly but firmly. "Santana, can you let go for a moment?"

She releases her death grip on her elbows and straightens, giving him an unfocused glare.

"Good," he says. "Thank you." He steps closer and grimaces at the bright red splatter of blood covering the front of her white tank top. He wonders whose blood it is. "Santana, can you take off your shirt for me? We're getting you something clean to wear."

Her hands drift to the hem of her tank top, and when she hesitates Kurt says, "It's not like David and I are going to get any sexual titillation from seeing you in a bra. We're just going to help you get cleaned up."

"Okay," she says quietly, and pulls the top over her head, leaving her in a plain tan bra. She lets it fall to the ground, and before she wraps her arms around herself again Kurt sees that the blood from the tank top has seeped through to leave sticky red patches across her stomach.

"I'm going to need one of the water bottles, too," Kurt tells Karofsky, and Karofsky makes an indistinct sound of affirmation. "You're safe now," he says to Santana.

"The fuck I am," she says, but her voice lacks its normal bite.

"As safe as we're likely to get," he amends. "We have a car, we have a gun, we have food, and we have each other."

Karofsky joins them, water bottle in one hand and jacket in the other. "Here you go," he says to Kurt.

Kurt picks up the discarded tank and finds a clean spot on the back. "Pour a little water on this, please," he requests. Karofsky unscrews the cap and dribbles out just enough water to get the fabric wet. Kurt approaches Santana and takes hold of one of her arms. "Let's get you cleaned off," he says gently.

She shudders as he carefully wipes the wet tank top over her arms and stomach, where the blood has gone tacky as it's slowly dried on her skin. "Why did it have to be Brittany?" she asks him.

"I don't know," Kurt says. He drops the tank top and takes his jacket and guides her arms into the sleeves. "I don't know why any of this happened. But we'll look out for each other, and we'll do our best to live through this."

"And we'll kill a fucking ton of zombies," Santana says. She snaps the jacket up the front with badly shaking fingers.

"And we'll kill a fucking ton of zombies," Karofsky agrees, screwing the cap back on the bottle and tossing it in the backseat.

Kurt leads Santana around to the passenger side and settles her into the front seat. "Saddle up," he says to Karofsky. "Time to hit the road."

***

They roll into Wapakoneta around six-thirty, Santana leaning out the window blowing holes in every zombie they pass with Kurt's shotgun. It hadn't taken more than a few minutes into the drive for her to shut down and stop crying, and the vengeful rage in her eyes that has replaced her grief is even more disturbing than seeing her distraught. Dave sits in the back, leg bouncing uncontrollably as he grips his bat and waits for Kurt to stop in front of the gun shop. "It should be the next block," he tells Kurt. "On the right."

Kurt nods. "Thank you," he says stiffly.

"So what's the plan?" he asks. It feels sort of weird deferring to Kurt, but he seems to be the one who has it together the most, and it makes sense not to screw with that dynamic. If Kurt's okay with being the brains of the operation, then Dave's not going to question it.

"You and Santana are going to go in and find appropriate firearms," Kurt says. "Take the shotgun and the bat. I'll stay with the car and make sure no one tries to steal it while you're inside. When you get back, we'll work out who gets what and head to the corner store we passed a few streets back. There should be plenty of water there, and more nonperishable food. We'll take what we can fit in my spare bag and get out of town as quickly as we can."

And that was why Dave doesn't have a problem with Kurt being in charge. "Sounds good."

Santana pulls the trigger again, and they all wince at the loud noise filling the enclosed space. "How are you going to keep people from jacking the car if we're taking the weapons?"

Kurt pulls over in front of the gun shop and reaches across Dave to open the glove box. A long bowie knife falls into Dave's lap. "If I can't run them over, I can give myself a fighting chance with this. It's…it was my dad's."

"You'd run over people?" Dave asks. "Not zombies, but people?"

"If it means we live through the night? Absolutely," Kurt says. "Look. I know what you must think of me. But we don't have much of a choice."

Not for the first time, Dave wonders what had happened in the hour between school getting out at three and Kurt finding him at four. He doesn't know much about psychology – he knows fuck-all, really – but it had to have been bad. "No, I get it," he says. "It'll keep us alive. I know."

Kurt meets his eyes in the rearview mirror and nods fractionally. "Thank you," he says. Then, businesslike, he says, "We're here. The sooner we do this the better."

"Got it, boss," Santana says. She opens her door and jumps out. Dave's not far behind her.

They burst through the door of the gun shop, spinning around back to back almost instinctively to check for zombies. "Clear," Dave says.

"Clear," she confirms. Santana heads over to the shotguns hanging on the wall.

Dave strides across the room to the handgun display case. He's amazed that there are still guns even left in the store. But then again, they didn't see a single person who wasn't a zombie on their drive into town. The outbreak must've hit here hard. He quickly finds the case for the heavier duty handguns and scans the selection. A big silver and black one catches his eye, and he calls out to Santana, "I've always wanted a Desert Eagle." 'Action Express,' the notecard beside it reads. '.50 caliber.'

"You watch too many movies," she says as she scans the racks. She stops and looks over. "Fuck."

No more movies. Probably ever. "Yeah." He smashes the glass on the case and grabs the gun. That was him settled. Now for Kurt.

Kurt's deceptively strong, Dave knows. Anyone who dances as much as he does, or spends any significant amount of time on Sylvester's squad, has to be tough. So it shouldn't be a wimpy gun. He needs to find one that Kurt can do some damage with. "Think Kurt's a semiautomatic guy or a revolver guy?" he asks as he surveys the guns lying in the shattered glass.

"Revolver," Santana says.

"That's what I thought," Dave says. He looks them over quickly and picks up a sturdy looking revolver, pulling out its notecard along with it. 'Smith & Wesson Model 500,' it reads. "Got it," he says. "Now for bullets."

Santana points to a shelf a few feet away from where she's standing. "Found it," she says, grabbing a shotgun identical to Kurt's. "Get me a box too. Twelve guage."

Dave finds the appropriate boxes and grabs two of each. "Let's bail," he says, arms overloaded.

Santana leads the way, new shotgun tucked under her arm and the old one braced against her shoulder as she looks out over the barrel. They slip out as quickly as they came in, every sense on high alert for zombies. Thankfully, none stood between the shop door and the Navigator, and they yank open their doors and throw themselves inside.

"Success?" Kurt asks, eyeing Dave's armful of guns and bullets.

"We're set," Dave says. He dumps his cargo on the seat beside him and opens the box of fifty caliber bullets. He loads them into Kurt's new revolver and passes it up. "Enjoy."

"I'm sure I will," Kurt says humorlessly.

Dave hands Santana the box of shotgun shells and sets about figuring out how to eject the magazine. It doesn't take him long at all to stumble across a button on the grip, and it comes right out. He fills it with the big bullets he's supposed to use for it and pushes it back in. "I'm good to go," he says.

"Me too," Santana says.

"Off to the corner store," Kurt says, and he starts up the car again, pulling a U-turn in the street that's a hair too tight for comfort. He takes off up the street slowly, turning right at the third intersection and stopping neatly at the curb outside the store on the following block. "I didn't see a soul while I was waiting," he says. "I'll lock up and come in with you."

"More guns are good," Santana says. She steps down from the passenger seat and slams the door behind her, shotgun at the ready.

Kurt twists around and pulls out an empty canvas bag and a medium sized duffel bag. "We'll want these," he says, and gets out, revolver in one hand and bags in the other. Dave follows suit, and he hears a beep that he guesses means that Kurt just locked the car.

They take this one slower, the aisles making them wary. Kurt silently indicates which aisles they should take, and they spread out, peering down the rows cautiously.

"Mother of fuck!" Santana swears, and less than a second later the loud crack of a gunshot splits the air. A second shot follows it, this time coming from Kurt's aisle.

"Any others?" Kurt asks.

"All clear here," Dave says. "Santana?"

"Just the one," she says.

"Okay," Kurt says. He walks back around to the front of the store and beckons Santana over. "Raid the first aid section," he tells her, handing her the canvas bag. "Get toothbrushes and toothpaste, too." He looks at Dave. "We need water. Lots of water."

"I'm on it," Dave says. He pauses for a second and adds, "Boss."

"Shut up and get the water," Kurt says, but there's no heat behind the words. If anything, he sounds tired. "I'll sort out the food." He takes off to inspect the single foods aisle in the store.

Dave sticks his gun in the back of his waistband and goes to the back where the big cases of bottled water are stacked. He hefts two of the eighteen packs of liter bottles into his arms and goes back to the front to set them on the floor, then heads back to grab a third and fourth. He makes the trip until the eighteen packs are all stacked up at the front and wanders over to Kurt's aisle to see what he's taking.

"Peanut butter," Kurt says in response to his unasked question. "Those big cans of soup with the pop-top lids. Jerky. Energy bars. Trail mix. Plasticware. Emergen-C. Instant coffee."

"Instant coffee?"

"I'm willing to bet we're all regular coffee drinkers," Kurt says. "If we don't have any tomorrow, we're going to all be flat on our backs with blinding headaches by noon. We have to wean ourselves off it."

"How are you doing this?" Dave asks. "I mean, I'm holding it together way better than I thought I would, but you're like a machine with all these plans and strategies."

"If I stop thinking about what we need to do to survive just that little bit longer, I'm going to break down," Kurt says flatly. "And if I break down, I'll be completely useless. It has to wait until we're safe."

"What if we're never safe?" Dave asks.

"Then when I'm ready to give up and die I'll let it all out." Kurt drops a box of raisins into the duffel bag and tells him, "We're going to need multivitamins. Get the big bottles."

Dave nods. He'll leave it alone for now. "Sure thing."

"David." Kurt tosses him the car keys. "When you're ready, start shifting the water. Santana and I will help once we have our bags in the car."

"Can do," Dave says. He shoves them in his jacket pocket and goes to Santana's aisle to grab the vitamins.

She looks up from where she's busy dropping ace bandages and bottles of Tylenol into her tote and says, "Get me the women's multivitamin."

He picks out a big bottle of women's vitamins and another one for men and dumps them in her bag. "There we go." She acknowledges it with a tip of her head. "I'm gonna start loading up the car. "Come help when you're ready."

"Yeah," she mutters.

Dave hoists one of the packs of water under one arm and unlocks the Navigator from the doorway. He sticks the keys back in his pocket and takes out his gun, scanning the dimly lit sidewalk carefully before stepping outside and opening the trunk. He sets his burden down and shuts the trunk again, making his way back inside the store with equal caution. Twice more he does this, accompanied on his third trip by Santana and Kurt, who drop their bags next to his growing stack of water. Santana stands guard by the open trunk, shotgun in hand, as Kurt and Dave ferry out the last packs of water.

"That's it," Dave says, and Santana slams the trunk shut and goes around to the passenger seat again, once more leaving Dave with the cramped seat behind Kurt.

Kurt starts up the car and flips on the headlights, taking off down the road that would eventually lead them to County Highway 150, and hopefully a deserted enough area to sleep without fear of waking up to a horrible death.

"There's a second bag of food at your feet," he says to Dave. "Could you get out something we can eat on the road?"

"No prob," he says, and unzips the bag to find something that would fit the bill. "Clif bars okay?"

"They're perfect," Kurt says. Dave tosses Santana a peanut butter chocolate one and selects a plain peanut butter one for himself. He thinks for a moment, trying to work out what Kurt might like, and chooses the pumpkin one. He tears the wrapping on it and holds it out, waiting for Kurt to grab it rather than dropping it in his lap like he did Santana's.

"Thanks," Kurt says, sounding faintly surprised to find it already opened for him.

Dave opens his own and shrugs. "No big deal."

They eat in tense silence, eyes peeled for signs of movement outside the car. Undead, human – it doesn't matter. Dave's never felt more alone in his life than right now, riding in a car in the fading light with a girl he has a strange and unhappy rapport with and a boy he's had a crush on for almost a year. This isn't his life. This isn't how it's supposed to go. He's supposed to go shoot hoops with Rashad and a couple of his other buddies at the park tomorrow. He's supposed to hit the gym on Sunday. He's supposed to go back to school on Monday and be nice to the Glee kids and pretend to be dating Santana.

But his buddies were probably dead, or worse, just like his parents. The gym's probably trashed and full of corpses and zombies. Half the Glee kids are dead or missing.

There's nothing left but the car and the road and his unlikely companions. And if that isn't depressing, he doesn't know what is.

After about half an hour, Kurt pulls over to the side of the highway and turns off the headlights. He takes the key out of the ignition, unbuckles his seatbelt, and turns around. "We need to get the seats flat," he says to Dave. "Can you get the latches yourself or should one of us come back to help?"

"I've got it," Dave says, getting up and leaning over the back of the seat awkwardly, his head pressed against the roof of the car. He finds the latch on the first row and lifts it, pushing the seats flat, and he crawls across the newly horizontal cushions to do the same to the second row of seats.

"We're coming back," Kurt says, and he climbs over his armrest and squeezes between the front two seats to join Dave on the makeshift mattress.

Santana follows behind him, and after a cursory look around she spots the large green and white quilt neatly folded on the floor behind the passenger seat. "Bedtime?" she asks, unfolding the quilt.

"It's almost nine," Kurt says. "We'll need a full night's sleep if we're going to be alert and prepared for whatever tomorrow brings." He lies down to the right of the middle, head facing the trunk. Dave takes the left, leaving Santana the space in between.

She draws the quilt over them as she lies down, complaining, "Could you give me a little room to breathe?"

"Body heat," Dave says. "Car's probably gonna get cold. Better to get squished in than to freeze."

"Whatever," Santana says, but she shifts onto her side away from Dave and cuddles into Kurt.

The interior lights switch off, immersing them in total darkness. Dave turns to face the window and tucks his arm beneath his head as a makeshift pillow.

No one says goodnight.

***  
 _The title of the story comes from the poem "Death has No Dominion" by Dylan Thomas._


	2. Day Two

Santana wakes to the sound of quiet conversation. The early morning sun shines through the window, hitting her face, and she sits up, clutching the quilt around her shoulders.

Damn. Not a dream. Her throat goes tight with misery. She digs the nails of her thumb and index finger into the web of her other hand viciously, squeezing down until the urge to cry has been thoroughly squashed. Her Brittany is gone. She's gone, and she's never coming back. All she can do now is take down as many of these zombies as she can and hope to hell that she goes down fighting. And if she gets her way, that's exactly how it's going to go.

She walks across on her knees to the edge of the mattress where Kurt and Karofsky are sitting, passenger doors open and legs hanging out. Karofsky is drinking from a steel thermos, and Kurt is eating a handful of trail mix. "Hey," she says. "That breakfast?"

Kurt passes her a bag of trail mix that's about half empty. "I'd say good morning, but it's not," he says. "How did you sleep?"

"Like crap," she says, pouring out a palm's worth of nuts, chocolate, and dried berries into her hand. "You?"

"Badly," Kurt says, and Karofsky nods.

"Kept thinking I was hearing things outside," Karofsky says. He takes a swig of whatever's in the thermos and hands it to Santana. "Your third of the coffee."

"Is it hot?" she asks.

"We have neither camp stove nor kettle, so no," Kurt says. "But it's better than nothing."

She sips it tentatively and screws up her mouth at the bitter taste. It's cold and unsweetened. Disgusting. But it'll keep up their energy for the next few hours. She gulps it down and tosses her handful of trail mix into her mouth to chase away the flavor. She follows it with another half a dozen mouthfuls and rolls up the bag tightly, stowing it away to eat later.

"Time to shower," she says, crawling to the back to rummage through the tote bag of meds and bandages she'd scrounged from the store yesterday. She fishes out the pack of moist towelettes and the two deodorants that she'd added as a last minute decision. "Catch."

Karofsky holds his hands up and catches the men's deodorant. "Why?"

"The whole zombie apocalypse thing is bad enough," Santana says. "Three smelly people sharing a car together for god knows how long is just the cherry on top of the giant shit pie. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to smell like ass if I can help it." She unsnaps Kurt's jacket and sets it aside, unsealing the pack and taking a towelette out to clean off her armpits.

Kurt stretches his arm out and grabs the pack. "Good point," he says. He strips off his jacket and his lime green tee shirt, wincing a little as he draws it over his head.

"Shit," Karofsky blurts out. He reaches for the hem of Kurt's shirt and helps him get it off, and once Kurt's shirtless Santana can see why Karofsky reacted the way he did.

"Shit's right," she says. The right side of Kurt's chest is covered in one big black bruise that stretches from a couple inches above his nipple to the far edge of his collar bone. "What the hell happened?"

"I didn't brace the shotgun the first time I fired it," Kurt says. "I would have iced it, but there wasn't any time." He pulls out a towelette and scrubs at his underarms, tossing it out the open door when he's finished. "So you two are on shotgun duty until it heals."

"Yes, boss," Santana says, aiming for snide and missing by a mile. How the hell Kurt ended up in charge is a mystery to her, but he's way more controlled than she is at the moment, and after what he said yesterday about running over people if he has to, she knows he's definitely more ruthless than Karofsky, no matter how much of a front he puts up.

Kurt trades Karofsky the towelette pack for the deodorant and pulls the cap off, twisting up the stick and swiping it over his pits. "That's not my name."

"That's kind of what you are, though," Karofsky says. He pulls off his red and gray McKinley Titans shirt and follows their lead with the perfunctory cleanup. "It's weird, but there it is. This whole thing's weird."

"Understatement," Santana says. She tosses her deodorant back into the bag and pulls Kurt's jacket back on. "Do we have any T.P.?"

"There's a package of paper dinner napkins in the food bag in the back," Kurt says. "Don't take a whole one. They have to last us."

She unzips the duffel bag in question and digs out the napkin package. She rips it open and takes one out, tearing it in half and then in half again. "Be back in a minute," she says, crawling back to the boys and the open door.

"Wait," Kurt says. He presses his revolver into her hand. "Just in case. And it has a big kick, so watch out for that."

"Yeah, whatever," Santana says. She slides past him and drops to the ground, walking off the road until she's just out of their line of sight. She tugs down her pants and crouches, doing her business as quickly as she can. As soon as she's done she heads back to the car, revolver held steadily in both hands in front of her.

"Any sign of 'em?" Karofsky asks, once again clad in his school shirt.

"Not one," she says. "We're probably far enough away from the city limits that there won't be a whole lot out here."

She uncocks the hammer and gives the revolver back over to Kurt, hoisting herself back into the car with one hand braced on Karofsky's shoulder. "I'm losing count of the number of ways this weekend sucks," she complains, taking her anger and channeling it into black humor. It startles a laugh out of Karofsky.

"We could make a list," he suggests.

"I'd hate to see it all written down," Kurt says. "I'd rather keep it all locked inside my head." He slides the pack of towelettes over to Santana, and she pulls one out and wipes her hands off thoroughly, crumpling it into a ball and lobbing it over Kurt's head onto the dirt beside the highway.

"There are maps in the passenger side pocket," Kurt tells Santana. "Would you get them out for us while David and I go relieve ourselves?"

"Since you asked so nicely," she says. "Go take your leak."

Kurt leaves her the two shotguns, and he and Karofsky get up and disappear behind the back of the Navigator. Santana crawls across to the front and contorts her body around the armrest and wide seat to reach into the side pocket. She grabs the thick stack of maps and sits back down on the 'mattress' to sort through the maps by state. He has Ohio and all the bordering states, as well as maps stretching south as far as Florida and East as far as New York. It would surprise her that Kurt's so well prepared for any hypothetical road trip on the eastern half of the United States, but then again, he's always been too ambitious to stay in Ohio. She figures his dad probably stuck them all in there when he bought Kurt his car.

They come back and clean off their hands with the towelettes, dropping them to the ground outside the car. "What next?" Santana asks.

"Next we break out the oral hygiene products and make use of them," Kurt says. "Then we take a multivitamin to supplement our less than nutritious food. After that, we'll talk strategy."

Santana shakes her head and stretches across the seats to drag the first aid bag over. "You're an obsessive over-thinker, aren't you?"

"If it keeps us alive and relatively healthy, don't complain," he says as he pulls out the toothpaste and toothbrushes. He distributes them out, ripping open the packaging on his own, and retrieves the water bottle he and Karofsky had used to make coffee this morning. "Use it sparingly."

He wets his toothbrush and squeezes out a pea sized blob of toothpaste onto the bristles before passing the bottle over to Karofsky. Karofsky follows suit as Kurt brushes his teeth vigorously, and Santana does the same when the bottle is handed over to her. When the spearmint hits her tongue she's immediately grateful for Kurt's foresight; she hadn't noticed how disgusting her mouth had felt until the moment she began brushing. It's the little things that are probably going to make the biggest difference, she figures. They can have food and ammo and wheels and just gut through it, but deodorant and toothbrushes make it all seem just a hair less bleak.

They all spit out their mouthfuls of coffee colored, minty foam into the dirt, and Kurt fetches the bottles of multivitamins. The bottle makes another round as they wash down the supplements with a generous mouthful of water. Santana caps the bottle again and takes a seat, scooting around to the far side to make room for the other two.

"What's the plan, fearless leader?" she asks, gesturing to the maps.

"That's as bad as boss," Kurt says. He unfolds the Ohio map and shifts the others off to the side to spread it out. They huddle around it. "I have an idea. It's fairly risky, so feel free to veto, but I honestly think it's our best option."

"What are you thinking?" Karofsky asks.

"We need to leave the country," Kurt says. "More specifically, we need to leave the continent – South America, too. Even if we raced down to, I don't know, Venezuela, as fast as we possibly could, the outbreak would be faster. If we can reach it by car, so can the zombies."

Karofsky sits back and looks disbelievingly at Kurt. "So you're saying we need to steal a boat and do what, cross the goddamn ocean?"

"Yes," Kurt says. "Just hear me out. We know how bad things are here. We don't know what it's like in Europe or Africa or anywhere else."

"Trading a hell we know for a potentially worse hell is stupid," Santana says. "And I don't know how to sail."

"We're dead if we stay here," Kurt says. "Dead. We're alone and vastly outnumbered. Eventually the power grid is going to shut off. I checked my phone this morning and the internet is already down. The pumps at the gas stations will stop working, and where will that leave us? The number of zombies will just keep getting greater and greater, and we're going to run out of bullets. So tell me. Which is more stupid: taking a risk and setting out to sea? Or staying here and being guaranteed an ugly death?"

"Damn you," Santana says. "Seriously, fuck you very much. I hate this plan." She sticks out her hand across the map. "Let's do it."

He shakes it firmly. "Good. David?"

"Yeah, I'm in," Karofsky says. He rifles through the maps of the coastal states that Kurt owns. "If we're looking for a place to take off from, I think I have a good one."

"Let's hear it," Kurt says.

Karofsky holds up the map of Georgia. "Tybee Island. It's just off Savannah – there's a lot of boats and ships there, and the town's pretty tiny. Maybe three thousand people or so. My, uh. My dad took me there for summer vacation year before last. I spent a couple weeks sailing around."

"That's not a bad idea," Kurt says. "Do you still remember how?"

"I remember the basics," Karofsky says. "I should be able to pick it up again. Show you guys how to, too."

"It's settled, then," Kurt says. "Next question. How long did it take you to get there? I'm assuming you drove."

"We drove," Karofsky said. "It took us maybe thirteen and a half hours."

Kurt nods. "How many big cities did you pass through?"

"Six," Karofsky says after a long pause.

"We need to work out a different route," Kurt says. "Driving through densely populated areas is too big a hazard."

"It'll take longer if we do that," Santana feels compelled to point out.

"On the other hand, it will keep us alive longer," Kurt says. "The fewer zombies we encounter the better our chance of surviving until we reach our destination."

She grudgingly concedes the point. "Fine. So what maps do we need besides Ohio?"

Kurt flicks his eyes toward the ceiling and mutters under his breath. "Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, both Carolinas, and Georgia," he says finally, dropping his eyes back to the map. "We should take this outside. There's nowhere near enough room to lay them all out."

Karofsky locates the necessary maps in the pile and jumps out of the car, and Kurt follows behind with the open twelve pack of water bottles. "There's a marker in the glove compartment," he tells Santana. "We'll need it."

Santana nods sharply and climbs into the front seat to retrieve the fine pointed Sharpie. After a moment's contemplation, she grabs the new shotgun and a handful of shells that she drops into the jacket pocket. She gets out, closes all the doors behind her and goes to the back to meet up with the guys, who are busy laying the maps flat and lining them up by highways, anchoring them in place with the unopened water bottles. They both have their guns tucked into their waistbands for easy access.

She drops the marker on the map in front of Kurt. "I'll keep an eye open while you guys figure it out," she says.

"Good idea," Karofsky says as he matches the last map and thunks down a water bottle on top of it. "So what do you think? Seventy-Five South, obviously, but –"

"But we want to cut over before we hit Dayton," Kurt says. He traces a finger down the yellow highway line and stops at a spot about two thirds of the way between Lima and Dayton. "We can cut through Piqua to US Thirty-Six."

"Right," Karofsky says. "And then to IN Two-Twenty-Five."

"That will take us through Richmond, but it's still small compared to Lima," Kurt says. "And it's a straight shot to IN One-Oh-One and IN One."

They work it all out together as they kneel over the maps with Santana standing guard, plotting out how to skirt around Cincinnati by driving out through Aurora, how they'd avoid going into Lexington by taking KY-4 to US-25 to I-75, how the best way to get around going through Knoxville and Greenville is to cut through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, how they'd go through Wrens and Waynesboro to miss Augusta, how the only big city they can't avoid is Savannah.

"That's that, I suppose," Kurt says. He studies the thin black line snaking across their composite map. "So that's Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Georgia. It adds another four hours of driving time, and god only knows what the main highways are going to be like. I estimate we'll spend close to a full day of driving, and that's without factoring in sleep and stopping for gas."

"It's better than taking it direct, though," Karofsky says. "We'll manage."

He pops the trunk and tosses the water bottles inside, and Kurt gathers up the maps, folding them neatly back into order. As he starts in on the third map, Santana spots movement out in the distance. "We've got company," she announces. "Want to see if they're friendly or just split?"

"Just split," Kurt says. He tosses Karofsky the keys and goes around to the front seat on the passenger side. "Get in," he tells them, calling back to them through the open trunk.

Karofsky slams the trunk shut and heads up to the driver's seat. Santana walks backwards to the backseat door, shotgun braced against her shoulder, and fumbles for the handle, not taking her eyes off the group of people or zombies or whatever coming toward them. She gets inside and shuts the door firmly, laying the shotgun across her lap.

"Let's go," she says.

Karofsky starts the engine and takes off down the highway. "Change of plans," he says, looking in the rearview mirror at the likely zombies fading into the distance behind them. "Two-Sixty-One to Thirty-Three to Seventy-Five."

"Works for me," Kurt says.

Santana shoves their supplies over to the horizontal seat behind her and flips the latch by her own seat, bringing the back up. She straps herself in and leans back.

The next time they pull over there'd better be a fuckload of zombies to kill.

***

They change from IN-101 to IN-1 at Brookville, Indiana just shy of twelve thirty, chewing on yet more Clif bars and drinking from their allotted bottles of water for the day. It surprises Dave at first that the roads and the surrounding land don't look more like a battlefield, but the farther they drive the more he realizes that it isn't a war zone so much as a ghost town. The desolation is chilling. There are cars abandoned on the highway, doors flung open and belongings scattered across the asphalt. No one is out going about their day to day lives; no music comes out of the speakers from the FM stations Dave tried. The few drivers they've passed so far all have a wary, hunted look about them, and they hunch over the steering wheel as they head to what they must hope is their salvation.

Santana's slipped the shoulder strap of her seatbelt off, and she watches the passing scenery with a weather eye, hand resting on her shotgun, ready to roll down the window and do violence at a moment's notice. In the seat beside Dave, Kurt studies the map of Indiana with the same imperturbable expression he's been wearing since he rescued Dave from his neighbors yesterday afternoon. The only difference is that now Dave can't see the cracks in the mask. Kurt's shoved it all down so far that none of it shows. His hands are steady. His eyes are cool and assessing.

Dave's blown straight past worry and into unease and apprehension as far as Kurt is concerned. He has absolute faith that Kurt can hold it together for as long as he needs to, but when that control breaks – it's going to be bad.

"We're fine for another thirty miles or so," Kurt says, looking up and taking a bite of his bar. "Then we'll want I Seventy-Four."

"Remind me when we get closer," Dave says.

Kurt nods. "We should probably stop for gas in Richmond. The fuel economy on this car is less than ideal even without being loaded up with cargo."

"You know your car better than I do," Dave says. "Guess we'll find out if the banks have crashed." Kurt looks at him blankly, and he elaborates. "Credit cards. The pump stations probably won't take 'em."

"I'm sure they won't," Kurt says. "I withdrew a couple hundred dollars from my checking account at the ATM in the gas station when I filled up the tank yesterday just in case."

"How the hell did you get so much done in an hour?" Dave asks.

"Forty minutes," Kurt corrects. "You'd be surprised at how much you can accomplish with sufficient motivation."

Dave wonders if he would have been able to be that efficient. He kind of hopes that he wouldn't have been. Whatever that 'sufficient motivation' was, he bets it was fucking traumatic as hell.

"Well, it's good for us that you did," Dave says. "We'd be even more screwed otherwise."

"Make that totally fucked," Santana says. "Remember this, Kurt, because I doubt I'm ever going to say it again, but you saved our asses."

Kurt takes a sip from his water bottle and shakes his head. "I saved my own ass," he says. "Saving anyone else's was just a fortunate side effect."

"That's pretty cold," Santana says.

"That's what I said," Dave tells her.

"It's pragmatism," Kurt says, sounding mildly irritated. "It's a matter of finding solutions to problems in a practical manner. You ought to give it a try yourself."

Santana scoffs at the idea. "I'm not down with turning into a robot like you have."

Kurt turns in his seat and looks at her levelly. "You're benefitting from what this 'robot' is doing, so knock it off with the color commentary."

"Where'd you lose your sense of humor?" she asks, sounding more exasperated than angry.

"On the dining room floor of my house," Kurt says. He turns back around and goes back to looking at the map.

Dave looks at Santana in the rearview mirror. She looks as clueless and troubled as he feels. He makes a mental note to not push Kurt any further about what happened.

"What I want to know is where they came from," Dave says, changing the subject abruptly. "It was like one minute everything was normal, and the next –"

"It all went to hell," Santana finishes for him. "I got nothing. Maybe it's some kind of creepy voodoo thing gone wrong."

"Doubt it," Dave says. "We would've noticed corpses crawling out of their graves. Maybe it's a virus."

"Yeah, but that doesn't make any sense either," Santana says. "Why would a virus suddenly be infecting people everywhere? Wouldn't there have been a place it all started from and then spread out? 'Cause if that had been the case, it would make way more sense than a nationwide airborne virus that suddenly infects like three quarters of the population, and then turns into a freaky zombie saliva transmitted virus. It could be some kind of chemical warfare thing."

"I'd estimate eighty percent, not seventy five. But does it even matter?" Kurt asks. "Regardless of how it started, it still happened. And now we live in a world with flesh-eating zombies."

"Speaking of," Santana says, "Can we take a pee break someplace where we see zombies?" She closes her hand around the barrel of her shotgun possessively.

"Not the point of bathroom breaks," Kurt says. "We keep moving unless we absolutely need to stop. We can't waste the bullets by purposely chasing down zombies to kill."

Santana gives the back of his head a dark look. The longer they go without killing zombies, the more restless Santana gets. Taking shots out the window in Piqua and in Richmond –the Indiana one – had settled her temporarily, but they'd gone past Liberty and Roseburg without any trouble, and they hadn't done anything but change highways at Brookville. Dave understands, just like he understands Kurt. Kurt's dealing with it by being logical and emotionless. Santana copes through violence and gallows humor.

Dave doesn't know how he's coping. He mostly just feels empty and lost. The last thing he wants to do is think about everyone and everything he'd taken for granted being stolen from him forever. It helps to have something to focus on. Get guns? Load up the water? Drive along a barren highway, navigating around the abandoned cars? He can do that. Shoot zombies? Ransack stores? He can do that, too.

He wonders how he ended up being the most mentally healthy person in their trio. Like everything else, it doesn't seem quite right.

"Then tell me a secret," Santana says.

"Why?" Kurt asks.

"If you're not going to let me kill the fuckers, then I have to get my kicks somewhere else," she says. "I might as well get it from a sharing-caring session with my two favorite gays."

"You're a bitch," Kurt says.

"Tell me something I don't know," Santana says. "And that's about me, not you."

Kurt sighs. "Fine. When I first realized that my register wasn't going to get any lower, I briefly considered going the operatic route. You have no idea how highly countertenors are prized in the opera world."

"Classy," Santana says. She pokes the back of Dave's seat. "How about you?"

The instinctive urge to avoid answering personal questions rises, and he shoves it aside. There really isn't any reason to hide anymore. "I watch – I used to watch Criminal Minds just because of Spencer Reid," he says.

"You're type isn't thin and gorgeous, not at all," she tells him mockingly. "Fearless leader?"

"No, it's your turn this time," Kurt says.

"Christ, you're pushy," she says. "Whatever. So I've had sex with more guys than either of you probably ever will. It sucked every time."

It doesn't escape Dave's notice that she leaves off the fact that there's not likely to be that many guys to have sex with in their future.

"I hear you," Kurt says. "Alright. One morning after being tossed in the dumpster one too many times, I let the air out of Puck's tires. He never figured out who gave his truck four flats."

"I remember that," Dave says. "He was bitching about it that whole week."

"Can we stop reminiscing now?" Kurt asks Santana. "There's no point to it. We're not getting any of it back."

"It's better than not talking and guessing who's going to snap first," Santana says. "My money's on you, by the way."

Kurt doesn't bother responding.

Dave steers carefully around a three car pileup that extends halfway into their lane. He takes a look inside the windows as they pass. The driver of the middle car is slumped over, very clearly dead, as is the passenger in the backseat of the front car. Everyone else is missing. He shivers.

"Think we'll ever find someplace safe?" he asks. "Finish high school, go to college, get a job, start a family? Have all that normal everyday stuff again?"

"As much as I'd like to return to a life where you're my biggest problem, I'm not holding out much hope," Kurt says. "We can only bet on the long shot and hope that we come out lucky."

A cynical laugh comes from the back seat. "You think after all this he's ever going to go back to being your biggest problem?" Santana asks. "I give it a month before we're all freakishly codependent, if we live that long. You'll probably be screwing in a month and a half. Again, if we live that long."

Kurt rubs his temples. "Could you stop being a pain in the ass for just a little while? Please?"

"You know I'm right," she says, but she stops needling him and goes back to staring out the window.

Kurt folds the map of Indiana so that the only section visible is the lowest right corner, and he slides out the map of Kentucky from underneath to study that one as intently as he'd studied the first two. Dave turns his attention back to the road, squinting against the glare of the midday sun. Broken safety glass sparkles in the light, and it crunches beneath the tires as they drive over it.

He wonders if the UN has quarantined the county, declared it a failed state. How long will it take before they bomb the hell out of this place to wipe out the zombies? Is there even a UN anymore?

Mile after slow, slow mile pass by in silence, the only noises in the car the sound of Santana drumming her fingers on the stock of her shotgun and the rustling of the maps in Kurt's lap. It's oddly calming to listen to; the small sounds remind Dave that he's not the only one left in this hellhole. And as much as he wishes he was doing this with someone else – his parents, Azimio, anyone not from the Glee Club – he knows he has a better chance of getting through it with Kurt and Santana. If they're anything at all, they're survivors.

"Our turnoff's coming up," Kurt says quietly.

Dave spots the sign and nods. There's an old tan Ford Taurus sitting abandoned by the exit, half in and half out of the lane, and he slows down to squeeze past it as carefully as possible. He does his best, but it's too cramped to get through without damaging either car, and he cringes at the sound of the Taurus' plastic bumper scraping the right side of the Navigator from the front all the way to the back. "Sorry," he says as soon as they're clear.

"Keeping the car looking pretty isn't really a top priority," Kurt says. "Don't worry about it."

Vanity is out the window now, along with hot showers and filling meals. He wishes it still mattered. He wants to be able to cling to some small sign that there's still something normal he can count on.

"Welcome to Ohio," Santana says as they pass back into their state for the last time. Her voice drips with heavy sarcasm.

"I'll be glad to put it in the rearview mirror," Kurt says.

"No kidding," Dave agrees.

"We'll pass through Harrison soon," Kurt tells Santana. "Keep your eyes peeled for zombies."

"It's about fucking time," Santana says. She rolls her window down and sticks the muzzle of the shotgun out.

God, she's bloodthirsty. But it's come in handy so far, and Dave will take bloodthirsty over terrified and helpless every time. He never thought he'd be grateful that Santana had always secretly terrified him back when everything was normal.

"Hold up," she says abruptly as they approach the outskirts of the town. "You see that?"

"Yeah," Dave says, eyeing the small crowd of zombies gathered around a little red Prius. "What do you think the odds are that there are people in there?"

"Good odds," she says. "Let's toast the bastards."

Dave glances at Kurt and sees a fleeting expression cross his face, and he realizes that Kurt has just contemplated the idea of passing by without helping. "Kurt."

Kurt blinks, and the expression is gone. "Yes, let's." He unbuckles his seatbelt and crawls into the backseat, hoisting himself over Santana's seat onto the third row, revolver in one hand and a fistful of bullets in the other.

Dave rolls down their windows and stops directly in front of the other car. He flips the safety off his gun, takes careful aim, and pulls the trigger. A fat zombie in a Mickey Mouse tee shirt drops like a stone. Two more follow as Kurt and Santana let off shots of their own. They fire into the crowd again and again, rarely missing.

Kurt ducks down beneath the window to reload and pops back up to squeeze off another shot. A tall, red-haired zombie topples over, the back of his head missing. Finally Santana catches the last one straight across the nose and knocks it flat on its back, unquestionably dead. Dave looks over at Kurt and Santana, heart pounding and ears ringing.

"Think that's it?"

"For now," Kurt says grimly. He opens the door cautiously and steps out, gun at the ready. Santana follows suit, and Dave takes the keys out of the ignition and jumps out as well, locking the car behind him.

"You guys okay?" Dave calls out to the people in the other car.

The doors open and two middle aged people get out, a man and a woman, faces ashen. They look shell-shocked. "We are now," the woman says. "Thank you."

"Our pleasure," Santana says with a feral smile.

"What happened?" Kurt asks, peering past them at the meager collection of supplies on their backseat.

"We ran out of gas," the man says. "We started out in Peach Grove yesterday and ran out right here last night. We've been stuck here ever since."

Dave leans in to ask Kurt in an undertone, "Can we spare a gallon?"

Kurt nods shortly, and Dave pops open the trunk, pulling out one of the containers of gas Kurt stowed away in the bottom left corner. He shuts the trunk firmly and brings it back around.

The couple's eyes light up. "Thank you," the woman says again. "You're lifesavers."

"You're lucky that's a hybrid," Kurt tells them as Dave hands it over. "You'll be able to make it to a gas station on a gallon. If you have cash the pumps will probably work for you. I'd suggest getting what food you can at the gas station while you're there."

"We'll do that," the man says. "We really appreciate this."

"Not a problem," Dave says. "Where are you headed?"

"North," the man tells them.

"Smart," Kurt says. "We have friends who went up that way. It's probably safest."

"What about you kids?" the woman asks.

Her question startles Dave. Christ. They are kids. They aren't even eighteen yet. But it sure as hell doesn't feel like it.

"We're still working that out," Kurt says smoothly. "But we wish you the best of luck. We ought to hit the road. It's best to do as much driving as you can during daylight hours."

"You're right, of course," the man says. "Take care."

And with a final tense goodbye, they get back into the Navigator, Kurt shutting the back door and going around to the passenger seat and Santana sliding into the seat behind Dave. They take off once more, leaving the stranded couple to fill their gas tank, unarmed and unaided.

"Think they'll make it?" Dave asks.

Kurt just shakes his head and reloads his gun.

"Not a chance," Santana says. "Not a chance in hell."

***

They pull off the highway to fill up outside of Richmond at around a quarter to five. The drive has been slow, abandoned cars and the occasional zombie delaying their progress and eating up precious time. Karofsky is a careful driver, though, alert to danger and able to follow directions without any hassle. Kurt's immensely grateful for this. It's bad enough that Santana has little regard for their safety so long as she can kill as many zombies as she possibly can. Having to deal with a second companion like her would strain his carefully maintained control even further.

He never imagined there would be a day when he'd be thankful for Dave Karofsky.

"I'll fill up," he says as Karofsky pulls up to one of the pump stations. "Santana, watch my back. David, watch the car."

"Could you stop calling me that?" Karofsky says, turning off the engine. "You sound like my, um. My dad."

"Dave it is, then," Kurt says. He gets out and goes around the back of the car to open the gas cap, revolver tucked in his jeans waistband and wallet in hand.

He feeds the machine a twenty dollar bill experimentally and breathes a sigh of relief when it's taken. Another three quickly follow, and he lifts the nozzle from its holder and hits the button for regular. As he fills the gas tank he sees Santana hovering out of the corner of his eye, face fierce and her shotgun steady against her shoulder. Through the window he can see Karofsky standing guard on the other side of the car, back straight and neck tight with tension.

They've become competent to a frightening degree in the past twenty four hours. All three of them have. And Santana and Karofsky are all that stand between him and an ugly death. The thought is reassuring. He'd do the same for them, of course, but a cold, detached part of him admits that it would be partially out of the desire to keep another pair of hands with them to shoot a gun and take the wheel and not simply because he cares for them.

He does care for them, Santana especially. He cares a lot, and he doesn't want to add any more names to the lengthy list of people he has yet to mourn. But surviving has to take precedence over caring, and he's just incredibly lucky that the two overlap so much. They've made him responsible, and he won't fail them. Not if he can help it.

A car drives slowly past in the direction they came from. It makes as if to turn into the gas station as well, but the driver moves on, likely having spotted Santana and Karofsky.

"What do you think that was about?" Karofsky asks. "I figured people would be trying to get help from each other or something. You know, banding together."

"It's one of two things," Kurt says. "Either they're completely unprepared for this and the guns scared them off, or they wanted to rob us of our supplies and possibly kill us and the guns scared them off. Pick one."

"Either way, I'm good with scaring people away," Santana says. "We're not going to be easy to pick off, that's for sure."

"Hope not," Karofsky says.

"How long is this going to take, anyway?" Santana asks.

Kurt shifts the nozzle from his right hand to his left. "It's a twenty eight gallon tank. A while."

"Well, take a shorter while," Santana says. "I don't like standing around and doing nothing."

"Would you really prefer it if there was something to do here?" Kurt asks her. "Never mind. I already know the answer."

"You don't like sitting around and doing nothing, either," Karofsky says.

"We all have our hobbies," Santana says. "Mine just happens to be blowing zombies' brains out."

"There are worse hobbies to have," Kurt says. "At least yours is useful." He glances at the meter. They're halfway through.

Something clatters over at the edge of the station, and they all stiffen. Kurt looks away from the pump in the direction of the noise and spots a zombie shuffling toward them.

"Hurry it up!" Santana hisses as she waits impatiently for it to get close enough to take an accurate shot.

"More coming from my side," Karofsky reports.

Kurt swears and wills the gas to pump faster. "Hold them off as long as you can," he says. "We need the gas."

Santana pulls the trigger and the zombie keels over. "On it."

There are two loud cracks from Karofsky's side of the car. "We need to bail," he calls out to them. "Now."

Another three zombies approach from Kurt and Santana's side, and as Santana blows another one away Kurt drops the nozzle to the ground and screws the cap back on as quickly as he can. "Everyone in the car, now!"

He and Santana fling themselves into the backseat and slam the door behind them. Karofsky joins them in the passenger seat less than a second later and hits the lock button on the key fob. Kurt crawls into the driver's seat and grabs the key from Karofsky, jamming it into the ignition and starting up the engine. They peel out as fast as possible, clipping one of the zombies with the front bumper as they exit the gas station.

"Directions?" Kurt asks Karofsky as soon as his heart stops racing. He takes a quick look at the fuel gauge and tightens his grip on the steering wheel in frustration. It's less than three quarters of the way full.

Karofsky fumbles for the map. "We need to get back on I Seventy-Five."

"Thanks." Kurt follows the access road back up to the freeway entrance.

They ride in silence for a few miles. Kurt's just beginning to feel relatively calm again when Karofsky says, "It's not going to get any better, is it?"

"Not here, at least," Kurt says. "There's nothing left here but zombies and people who haven't died yet."

"We're pretty much fucked to hell and back," Santana agrees. She flops over onto her back along the row of seats, cradling her shotgun like a security blanket. "But we're getting out of here so that the ocean can kill us instead of the zombies. That's a way more boring way to die, by the way."

"Well I for one don't plan on going down in a pointless blaze of glory," Kurt says. "Where there's life, there's hope. And we're alive."

"For now," Santana says darkly.

"If we can say 'for now' at the end of every day, we're doing better than most," Kurt says. He checks the speedometer and slows down to fifty miles an hour. Even if adds to their travel time, it will conserve their fuel. He briefly contemplates putting it in cruise control, but thinks better of it when he realizes that there will likely be many more abandoned cars to navigate around on the drive. "Where do you think we should stop for the night?"

Karofsky looks out the window at the early evening light and back at the map. "Depends. Want to keep driving until eight or nine again, or do you think we should pull off when it gets dark?"

"The roads are bad enough in broad daylight," Kurt says. "Let's quit around seven thirty."

Karofsky nods. "At the speed we're going, we should be right around Harrogate then, maybe a few miles past it."

"Let's aim for past it," Kurt says. "The further from town the better." It might only provide the illusion of safety, but he'd rather have that than the guarantee of waking up surrounded by zombies if they parked for the night in the middle of town.

In the back, Santana starts singing softly. "Another head hangs lowly, child is slowly taken. And the violence caused such silence, who are we mistaken?"

It sounds vaguely familiar, in an odd, depressing way.

"But you see, it's not me, it's not my family. In your head, in your head, they are fighting," she continues. "With their tanks, and their bombs, and their bombs, and their guns. In your head, in your head, they are crying."

Karofsky lets out a short, sharp laugh. "'Zombie?' Really?"

"It seems appropriate," Santana says. Kurt can hear the undercurrent of bitterness beneath her casual rejoinder.

"You're morbid," Kurt says.

"Tell me something I don't know." She begins to sing again.

Kurt does his best to tune her out, hoping that she goes back to being quiet before they hit Berea. If he has to listen to her singing songs that appeal to her mordant sense of humor the whole way through, this will be an interminable two and a half hours.

They pull off to the side of US-25 about halfway between Harrogate and Tazewell as the last of the sunlight has faded. Kurt turns off the engine and squeezes between the front seats to join Santana in the back. Karofsky eyes the gap and lets himself out through the door, clambering into the back in the more traditional manner. "Dinner time," he says as he flips the switch to flatten the middle seat.

"Do we have a flashlight?" Santana asks, poking through the first bag of food. "It's going to be a bitch to eat and pee and all that good stuff without one."

Kurt leans over to open the toolbox. "I think there's a headlamp in here somewhere." He sifts through the unsorted tools and wires at the bottom until his fingers come into contact with a wide elastic band. "Found it."

"Awesome," Santana says. She grabs it out of his hand and sticks it on her head, turning it on, and goes back to looking through the food selection. "Soup, trail mix, energy bars, peanut butter, or jerky," she says. "I vote soup."

"I second the motion," Kurt says. "Dave, there's a box of plastic utensils in the other bag. Could you grab us some spoons?"

In response, Karofsky crawls across the seats to tear open the box and fetch a few spoons. Santana tosses them both soup cans and pops open her own, snatching a spoon from Karofsky's hand. "Oh god," she says, pulling a face at the first mouthful. "This is disgusting." She shines a light on the label. "Okay, who wants to trade me for French onion soup?"

"I'll take it," Kurt volunteers, handing over his can of chicken noodle. Santana's right. It is pretty gross cold and without the gruyere or the crouton, but it's filling and it's far better than nothing.

They eat quietly, tossing the empty cans out the door as they finish. Santana follows her dinner with several large gulps of water from the second of her two daily water bottles and screws the cap back on, grabbing Kurt's revolver and one of the torn up quarters of the napkins. She crawls across Karofsky's legs to head off the highway a short distance. "Back in a minute," she says.

Kurt wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and opens the door facing the highway. He stands just to the right of the entrance, back to the car, and relieves his bladder onto the road. Body modesty is completely out the window now. If they haven't seen each other at their worst yet, they will soon. He's not looking forward to it in the slightest, but he has to face facts. In as close of quarters as they'll be sharing together for god knows how long, he doubts there will be any secrets between them in a relatively short amount of time. "If you need to, now's the time," he tells Karofsky as he zips up and turns around to climb back in.

Karofsky nods and slides out the door in his place. Kurt takes the opportunity to spread out the quilt while he's the only one inside the car, slipping underneath to claim the spot he'd slept in the night before. Karofsky soon joins him, and Santana comes back not even a minute later. She slams the door behind her and crawls across Karofsky's legs once again, lifting the edge of the quilt to lie down between them.

"Night," she says. "Don't let the zombies bite."

"We'll see each other in the morning," Kurt says firmly, and Santana scoots toward him, insinuating herself under his arm with her back to his chest.

"Yeah we will," she says. "We're too badass to kick it in our sleep."

"You know it," Karofsky says.

Kurt touches his forehead to the back of Santana's mildly oily hair. "Goodnight."

"Night," Karofsky and Santana say quietly.

And slowly, so slowly, Kurt drops off into sleep.


	3. Day Three

Dave wakes up squished against the side of the car, Santana's knee digging into his thigh and her slow, even breaths hot against the back of his neck. He sits up carefully, doing his best to extract himself from between Santana and the cold plastic without disrupting her sleep. When he's free, she rolls over into his recently vacated spot and tugs the quilt around her firmly. He looks around their bed for his gun, and when he locates it he picks it up and scoots across their bed to the open door, hopping down to the asphalt to find Kurt.

"Over here," Kurt says quietly from where he's perched on the narrow front fender of the Navigator, legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. Two energy bars are at his feet; a third one, half eaten, is in his hand. He holds out the thermos from yesterday morning to Dave. "I had my share already."

Dave joins him, picking up one of the bars and accepting the thermos of cold black coffee. "Didn't want to wake Santana," he says. "She looks like she could use the rest."

"We all could," Kurt says, taking another bite out of his bar.

"You really need it," Dave says. "You can't keep going like this. If you burn out, we're kind of fucked."

"I won't burn out," Kurt says. He sighs and leans back against the car, tilting his face toward the morning light. "I can't burn out."

"Can't and won't aren't the same thing," Dave tells him. "Just – try to get more sleep, okay?" He takes measured sips of the coffee, eyeing the level every few mouthfuls to make sure he's leaving enough for Santana.

"I don't understand you," Kurt says. "I understand my own reaction to this, distasteful as it is. I understand Santana's reaction. But you? I can't quite put my finger on it."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but neither one of you is totally sane right now," Dave says. "And that works okay. It's doing a lot to keep us safe. But it means that I don't get to lose it like you two. And it fucking sucks having to be the only one who isn't screwed in the head in some way. So maybe it's your job to organize shit and make decisions, and maybe it's Santana's job to kill zombies and keep us from getting eaten. I'm stuck with making sure you guys don't go completely off the rails."

Like with that couple in the Prius yesterday. Kurt's too close to it to see how messed up it was to even think about not helping. Kurt helps rein Santana in, but who does that for Kurt?

Dave does, that's who.

"Don't worry. There's no way to take something that true the wrong way." Kurt gives him a pale imitation of a smile. "You're the ballast to our hot air balloon of insanity, keeping us from getting too far off the ground. It's not a job I envy."

Dave shrugs. "I don't exactly want yours, either."

"We do what we have to in order to get through this," Kurt says. "We can process later."

"Yeah." Dave polishes off his energy bar and drops the wrapper to the ground. "Know what I really miss right now?"

"Besides family, friends, and civilization, you mean?" Kurt asks.

"Yeah, besides that." Dave rubs his hand over his stubbly chin. "I miss shaving."

Kurt runs a finger across his jawline where a faint dark shadow has appeared overnight. "I do, too. I've never needed to shave more frequently than every other day at most, but I'll start to look pretty scraggly soon."

"If you're gonna look scraggly, I'm gonna look like one of those wackjob mountain men," Dave says. He looks down into the thermos and decides he's had his fill, and he screws the lid back on and sets it on the ground.

"Probably," Kurt says. He drops his own wrapper and sits upright. "I took a look at the maps before I came out here. Judging by how long it took us to get here yesterday, I think we could make it to Louisville by the end of the day."

"Kentucky Louisville or Georgia Lousville?"

"The one in Georgia," Kurt clarifies. "Though we'll definitely need to stop for gas. Running out on the highway would put us in the same situation as that couple outside Harrison. Four gallons won't do much with a car like this one."

"When we get to Tybee Island we should do another food and water run," Dave says. "I don't think we're gonna have enough for what we're planning if we don't."

"Good idea," Kurt says. "Offhand I can think of a dozen other things we need, not just for getting there but for the voyage as well. We ought to keep an eye out for useful items."

"Like what?" Dave asks.

"A lantern, for one," Kurt says. "The headlamp is a poor substitute."

"Yeah it is," Santana says as she comes around from the side. She picks up the thermos and the last energy bar and slouches against the front of the car beside Kurt. "Morning, fearless leader."

"Back at you, savage gunslinger," Kurt says.

She snickers and rips open the packaging on her breakfast. "Exactly."

"You looked like you were sleeping alright when I got up," Dave says. "Get a decent night's sleep?"

"Better than I thought I would," Santana says. She takes a large bite of her energy bar and washes it down with the coffee. "How about you guys?"

"I slept rather soundly," Kurt says. He sounds disapproving. "I expect it's the stress of our situation setting in. At least I woke up fairly early."

"We'll be on a boat by tomorrow night," Dave says. "It'll be okay to sleep more heavily then."

"Mmhmm." Santana pops the last piece of the bar into her mouth and crumples up the wrapper, throwing it like she's making a free throw into an invisible basket. "Got any hair ties? Because my hair is going to get gross pretty soon."

Kurt doesn't seem to take offense at the implication that he'd have hair things for girls in his car. Instead, he says, "No, but I have an idea."

He disappears around to the side, and after a minute or so of rummaging noises he returns with a short length of thin, stretchy cling bandage. "Hold this," he tells Dave, holding it out between two fingers.

Dave takes it from him, and Kurt goes to stand behind Santana, running his fingers through her hair and separating it into three neat sections. Santana lets out a tiny sound of satisfaction as Kurt briskly gives her a tight, even braid.

"The bandage, please," he says, holding out his free hand. Dave passes it back, and Kurt uses it like a ribbon, wrapping it around the end of the braid several times before tying it in a firm double knot. "That should hold," he tells Santana.

"You know this totally makes you my gay hairdresser, right?" she says, turning around to look up at him with a smug expression.

"I'm going to pretend that was a thank you and just move on," Kurt says.

Santana takes another drink from the thermos. "You do that."

Kurt shakes his head. "It's going to get pretty warm today," he says. "Do you want a fresh shirt? It will probably be loose on you, but it would be more comfortable than wearing my jacket."

"That would be great," Santana says. "I'm still weirded out that you have normal clothes. Pod-Kurt comes with his own brand new wardrobe, I guess."

"You're lucky you're indispensible," Kurt says. He beckons to Santana, and she follows him around to the side of the car and through the open door.

Dave trails after them, stripping off his own ripe shirt to "take a shower," as Santana had called it. Inside the car, Santana is sitting cross-legged on the seats in her bra and jeans, rubbing a towelette over her face before using it to clean beneath her arms. Kurt lets his own towelette fall to the ground and takes up the deodorant, tossing the pack of towelettes to Dave.

"So what do you have for me?" Santana asks as she caps her own deodorant.

Kurt digs underneath the front cushion and comes up with a white tee-shirt. He drops it in her lap, and she holds it up and smirks. "Really? You brought this one?"

"Tee shirts are practical," Kurt says, shrugging.

Santana tugs it on and stretches the hem out in front to read it upside down. "This is the ultimate in false advertising," she says, showing Dave her "Likes Boys" shirt.

"Who exactly do you plan on advertising to?" Dave asks, scrubbing at his armpits.

She stills and looks away, and Dave can see that she's digging her fingernails into her hand in her lap. "No one," she says finally, all traces of humor gone from her voice. "Not a single damn person, because there's not a single damn person left, and the only – fuck."

Dave casts the towelette aside and crawls inside the car, lying back and tugging Santana down with him to hug her tightly. She's stiff in his arms for a long, tense moment, but she collapses against his chest and buries her face in his neck. "There are at least two people left," he says. "Course, we don't really want you like that. But the point is that you're not alone in this."

"I just miss her," Santana says, her voice muffled. "I really miss her."

Kurt reaches over and gives Santana's ankle a supportive squeeze. "We all do. I know you miss her the most, and I'm sorry she's not with us right now."

Santana reaches blindly back for Kurt's hand, and he takes it promptly. "We are going to kill some of those fuckers today," she tells him. "Your big over-planned schedule for the day better include that."

"We're in the early stages of an apocalypse," Kurt says. "There will be zombies to kill wherever we go in this car." Somehow he manages to make the bleak observation sound reassuring.

She nods into Dave's neck. "Good." Some of the tension seems to leave her body, and she pulls back to look Dave in the eye. "You're really hairy, you know that? It's incredibly unsexy," she says. The return of her frank, bitchy observations was a pretty obvious sign that she considered the subject closed.

"I've noticed, yeah. But since you're only into chicks you're not exactly the best source to say what is and what isn't sexy with guys," he says. He lets her go and prods her in her side. "Get off so I can go cover my hairiness with a shirt."

She rolls off and lets go of Kurt's hand. "You do that," she says. "I'll be over here brushing my teeth and wishing one of you was a hot lesbian." She gathers up her toothbrush and the toothpaste from the pocket behind the driver's seat and takes them outside along with a mostly-empty water bottle.

"If wishes were horses," Kurt says dryly. He pulls his shirt back on and takes his own toothbrush outside to join Santana.

Dave makes use of the deodorant and gets dressed again, wrinkling his nose at the smell of his tee shirt. If it's this ripe in only three days, he can't imagine how awful they'll all smell in a week. He grabs his toothbrush and sits at the edge of the bed with his legs hanging out into the street. "Hit me," he says, holding out the toothbrush.

Kurt splashes a little water on the bristles and squeezes a small dollop of toothpaste out. "'Oo's navigating this time?" he asks around a mouthful of toothpaste.

Santana spits out her toothpaste. "Not me. And I'm not driving either."

"Is there a reason for this?" Kurt asks, spitting out his mouthful as well.

"You need me in back," she says. "I'm more useful behind a shotgun than behind a map or a wheel. So I'll chill in the backseat with my new best friend and roll down the windows so I can blow those undead sons of bitches away while you boys get us to our boat."

Kurt nods. "Makes sense," he says. "Plus you'd rather be shooting things than doing anything else."

"There's that, too," she says.

Dave spits out the toothpaste and takes the bottle from Kurt to give his toothbrush a quick rinse. "I'll navigate," he says. "I need a break from driving."

"That works for me," Kurt says. He hands off his toothbrush to Santana and opens the driver's seat door. "Let's get a move on. It's nearly nine. We can't afford to waste any more time."

"Yes, boss," Santana says, snatching Dave's toothbrush and hopping into the middle seat. She shoves the quilt toward the trunk of the car and lifts the latch to raise the back of the middle seat.

Dave closes the door for her and goes around to the passenger seat. "Next stretch should be easy," he says as he buckles himself in and slams his door shut. "Seventy-Five ends right at I Eighty-One."

"Left or right for south?" Kurt asks. He takes the keys from their resting place in the cup holder and starts up the car.

"Left for south," Dave says. He checks the scale in the lower left corner of the map and adds, "Then I Forty East after twenty miles or so."

Kurt pulls out onto the highway. "An easy stretch is a good way to start the day," he says. "It leaves far less room for errors or incidents." He rolls down Santana's windows. "But if luck isn't with us, well. I'm sure the savage gunslinger can take care of that."

From the backseat comes the distinctive sound of a shotgun being reloaded. "Got that right."

Dave slouches in his seat, knees splayed open wide to make room for his long legs, and wonders what accurate yet insulting title they'll come up with for him.

***

They're right in the middle of Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina by two thirty. They're not making nearly as good of time as Kurt had hoped, and it's just as frustrating as watching the needle on the fuel gauge slip ever so slightly lower as they drive farther and farther. Things would have gone so much faster this morning if it hadn't been for the aging Crown Victoria lying across their path, which Kurt and Karofsky had needed to shove off the road before they could continue. Or if they hadn't encountered that very large and aggressive group of zombies in Newport that had forced them to not only shoot their way through – even Kurt, who was driving – but to mow a few of them down along the way. Kurt was positive that if he parked and bothered to check the front of the Navigator the grill would be bloody. Or things might have gone more quickly if there hadn't been a fallen tree across US-23 on the way to Sylva. They'd had to double back all the way to Waynesville to get to US-441 and skirt around past Bryson City to take NC-28 in order to get back on track, which added another hour to their already too lengthy drive.

Yes. It had certainly been an easy morning.

Karofsky holds an unwrapped energy bar under his nose. "You need to eat," he says.

"Not yet," Kurt says. "I want to get clear of this forest first. I don't have time to eat."

"Kurt." Karofsky sounds determined. "You really need to eat. I get it. Seriously. Today sucks. But if you get too hungry you'll make mistakes."

"Fine." Kurt holds out his hand, and Karofsky presses the energy bar into it. "At the rate we're going, it will take a miracle to reach Louisville by the end of the day."

"Fresh out of miracles," Karofsky says. "But I have water. You should drink, too."

Kurt eats on autopilot, not taking his eyes off the road. "Unscrew the lid for me and hang on to the bottle when I'm not drinking and I will."

A few seconds later Karofsky holds out an uncapped water bottle. Kurt finishes his lunch and tosses the wrapper out the window, taking the proffered bottle and drinking deeply from it.

"Thanks." He passes it back to Karofsky.

"No problem," Karofsky says. He rustles the map and sighs. "Enjoy Four-Forty-One while it lasts. The route starts getting fucked around when we hit Clayton."

"How bad are we talking?" Kurt asks.

"Like miles and miles of fucked," Karofsky says. "It's like the highways have no clue what the hell they're doing or where they're going. We're talking half a dozen different ones between Clayton and Royston alone, not to mention all the ones that come after. Twelve, thirteen in total?"

"Can I just say that we all have a very legitimate reason to hate the South now?" Santana chimes in from behind them. "Right wing political bullshit aside – and we can totally set it aside, since there's no goddamn government anymore – North Carolina has been actively getting in the way of our progress. And it doesn't sound like Georgia's going to be any better."

"We don't pull over without a very, very good reason for the rest of the day," Kurt says. "There had better be an extremely compelling reason for any stop we make."

"No argument here," Karofsky says. He nudges Kurt in the elbow with the water bottle. "Drink more."

Kurt rolls his eyes and takes the bottle again. "And Santana says I'm pushy." Still, he takes several large swallows from it and passes it back.

"Remember what I said about you burning out?" Karofsky asks. "If you're gonna stick with what you said about not doing it, then yeah. I'm gonna be pushy. Suck it up."

"Think he's the mother hen?" Santana asks Kurt.

Kurt shakes his head. "No. He's the normal one."

"I thought there was something wrong with him," Santana says. "That explains a lot."

"Yeah, yeah," Karofsky says, screwing the lid back on the bottle and setting it at his feet. "You're hilarious."

"I appreciate it, actually," Kurt says seriously. "You're right. We could use a little normalcy to balance things out."

"Nice to be appreciated," Karofsky says.

"But there's balance and there's trying to fix things that can't be fixed," Kurt continues. "Look after us all you want. Pretend to be my Jiminy Cricket. Fine. But if your attempts to be the voice of reason come into conflict with something we might need to do to survive, I will ignore your advice. Our top priority is getting out of here alive and in one piece."

If he felt even remotely like laughing he would crack up at the absurdity of being in a situation in which Karofsky is the nice one. Instead, he looks away from the road for a brief moment to meet Karofsky's eyes squarely in an effort to drive the message home. Karofsky looks back with concern written all over his face. "Got it," he says. He hesitates a moment, then says, "Kurt –"

"No," Kurt says flatly, eyes back on the road. "We're not talking about me." They weren't talking about what he saw. What he did. What he'd had to listen to as he loaded up the car.

That's off limits until he says otherwise. No one else gets to make that decision for him.

"Roger that," Santana says.

To Kurt's everlasting gratitude, she and Karofsky drop any attempt at conversation for the next hour and a half, and the only words Kurt has to listen to are those of Karofsky's quiet directions as they neared turnoffs and entry ramps.

About an hour over the Georgia border, Santana leans forward and says, "Stop the car."

Kurt slows down reluctantly. "What's the extremely compelling reason?"

"Abandoned car that still has a ton of what looks like useful shit in it," she says.

"Where?" Kurt asks, hitting the breaks and putting the car in park.

"About fifteen yards or so back," Santana says. "Just flip a quick U-ey and we'll put everything in the back and bail."

"Not a problem," Kurt says, and puts the car back in drive. He pulls a tight U-turn and speeds back over to the car Santana had mentioned.

He parks the car right beside the dark green Camry and kills the engine. Santana unbuckles her seatbelt and scrambles out, shotgun in hand. Karofsky looks to Kurt for instructions.

"Keep her from doing something reckless, like wandering off to find zombies to kill," Kurt says. "We're in and we're out as fast as possible. We can't waste time standing around and sorting it."

"Sure thing," Karofsky says. He gets out quietly, holding his gun at the ready.

Kurt follows suit, tucking his revolver into his waistband and opening the trunk door before walking over to see what Santana had discovered. At first glance, the dark blue Camry looks untouched. But when Kurt goes around to the other side, he can see that the driver's side window is rolled all the way down. There's a large smear of dried reddish-brown blood down the inside of the door and across the seat.

"That's too bad," Kurt comments, eyeing the blood. But what was one person's misfortune is their stroke of luck. He looks up to see Karofsky looking back at him with a strange, worried expression.

Oh, right. He must not sound like he cares one way or the other what happened to the driver. Though to be perfectly honest, he doesn't really. He cares about getting to the coast and leaving the country. He cares about making sure that he, Santana, and Karofsky all survive, because they need each other to make that happen. Everything else just isn't important enough to care about. Not yet.

He suspects that when this is over and done with – and it will be over and done with – he's going to thoroughly detest himself.

"What did you find?" he asks Santana, coming back around to the other side of the car.

Santana points into the backseat. "Basket full of clean clothes and a few bags of groceries," she says. "And there's some stuff in there that makes me think whoever this guy was, he was camping before the zombies hit. Maybe he'd come back and was running errands when it happened."

Kurt spies the camp stove on the seat beside the laundry basket and raises his eyebrows. "I guess we'd better see what's in the trunk," he says. "Santana, break the window, open the door, and get this stuff back in our car. Dave, let's get the trunk open."

He and Karofsky go to the trunk as Santana smashes in the safety glass. "Best way to get it open might be to just shoot the lock," Karofsky says. He aims his gun at the lock and says, "You might want to get away, just in case it ricochets or something."

"Or we could check the front of the car to see if the keys are inside," Kurt says. "Wait here." He heads over to the driver's side once more and reaches through the window to open the door. It swings open, and Kurt leans inside, being careful not to set his hand on the blood. The keys are still in the ignition, thankfully, and he pulls them out and takes them over to Karofsky. "Here. It saves us a bullet."

Karofsky gives him a small smile. "Guess you're thinking straighter than me right now. Good idea." He sticks the key in the lock and turns it, popping open the trunk.

It's packed full of camping equipment: sleeping bags, a tent, folding canvas chairs, and more things he can't quite see underneath the bigger things. It's everything he'd wished he'd been able to find before they left Lima.

"Jackpot," Kurt says with satisfaction. "Let's shift this stuff." He sticks a pair of folding chairs under his arm and hooks his fingers through the cords at the top of the sleeping bags.

Karofsky grabs up the tent and an armful of more equipment and follows Kurt over to the Navigator, where they drop their acquisitions into the already overcrowded well. They pass Santana on their way back as she goes to deposit the laundry basket and the three bags of groceries she's stacked on top of the clothes.

"If that's it for the backseat, keep watch while we finish with the trunk," Kurt tells her. She nods and shifts the shotgun up against her shoulder, and Kurt turns back to the open trunk to take up another load.

He packs as much of the assorted equipment into his arms as he can carry and ferries it back to the Navigator, a touch less tense than he had been before Santana began guarding their backs. Karofsky makes another trip with him, and Kurt stays behind to shift their new belongings into a better order so as not to crush anything while they drive.

"Fuck!"

Kurt leaves off organizing and turns around to see Karofsky clutching his left hand, blood dripping out from around his fingers where he's clamped them across his palm. "What happened?" he asks sharply.

"Fucking chef's knife in there," Karofsky says. He lets out a pained hiss and holds his hands away from his body. "I need something for this."

"Hang on." Kurt runs back to their car and grabs one of the folded tee-shirts from the laundry basket. He folds it again and rolls it up tightly and runs back over to Karofsky. "Let go," he says, and when Karofsky does he presses the thick roll of cotton against the gash in his palm. "Squeeze on this."

"That fucking hurt," Karofsky says, and the veins in his forearm stand out as he squeezes down on the shirt as hard as he can.

"Go sit in the car," Kurt tells him. "I'll finish up here."

Karofsky takes off for the passenger seat, and Kurt scans the bottom of the trunk to see what else might be useful. The chef's knife will be useful, obviously, though he's vaguely curious as to what sort of person took a seven inch kitchen knife with them on camping trips. Perhaps the little pot in the corner of the trunk will come in handy. The flashlights definitely will. He gathers them up and takes them to their car, mindful of the sharp edge of the knife. He sets everything down but the knife, closes the trunk, and nods to Santana. "We're leaving."

Santana climbs back into the middle seat, and Kurt gets into the driver's seat, knife in hand. He reaches across Karofsky to open the glove compartment and sticks it in with the bowie knife.

"How bad is it?" he asks Karofsky before starting the car.

"It's not a scratch," Karofsky says. "If I thought we could swing it, I'd say it needs stitches."

"Not possible," Kurt says. "But the first aid kit is right behind your seat. If you ride back there, Santana can help you."

Karofsky opens his door and jumps out, closing it behind him to get into the middle seat with Santana. "I'm good," he says. "Let's get lost."

Kurt starts up the engine and pulls another U-turn to head back in the direction they were originally headed. He'll pass the maps back in a few minutes. The next half hour or so should be fairly straightforward.

"What do you need?" Santana asks Karofsky as she pulls the first aid kit out from under the seat in front of them.

"A sterile bandage, alcohol, and a cotton ball," he tells her. "But first I need water. We have to flush out anything that could get it infected."

Kurt weighs the options. They need to conserve as much water as possible. But an infection would render Karofsky useless, and could even be fatal. He briefly considers telling Santana to use the already open bottle on the floor beside her feet, but decides it's too risky. "Crack open a new bottle," he says. "Don't worry about getting the floor wet. It's not like we're keeping the car." He glances at them in the rearview mirror. Again Karofsky is giving him a strange look, and Kurt wonders how much of what just went through his mind was visible on his face. He breaks eye contact and goes back to watching the road, but continues to take quick looks into the mirror to see what they're doing.

"Yessir, fearless leader," Santana says. She unbuckles her seatbelt and hangs over the back of her seat to grab a fresh bottle of water. "Gimme your hand, big guy."

Karofsky pulls the fabric away with a grimace of pain and holds out his hand. "Don't pour it right in the middle," he says. "Pour it from the end here, where I have my hand tilted up. It'll wash whatever's in there out."

Santana screws off the lid and starts pouring the filtered water onto Karofsky's cut. As the water splashes onto the carpeted floor, Kurt thinks distantly that they have their very own bloodstain now.

"That's enough," Karofsky says after a while. "Now I need the bandage. I can't do anything about it until the bleeding stops, and I need something cleaner than this to soak it up."

Santana flips open the lid on the first aid kit and pulls out a thick white pad enclosed in plastic. She rips it open and presses it against Karofsky's bloody palm, and he clenches his fist around it. "What next?"

"After the bleeding stops, I need you to wipe down the skin around it with alcohol," Karofsky says. "And then I need you to get superglue from the toolbox and while I hold the sides closed you're going to seal it shut."

"Where the hell did you learn all this?" Santana asks, sounding intrigued and impressed.

Karofsky shrugs. "I played hockey for two years. You need to know how to patch yourself up if you're gonna play."

Kurt looks back at the road and makes his face as calm and smooth as possible. It would be inappropriate to look satisfied after Karofsky getting injured like that. But it seems that there's more to Karofsky than his need to preserve the sanity of their little trio. Apparently, they have themselves a medic, and Kurt is incredibly pleased to hear it.

***

Lexington, Georgia flies past at around five-fifteen while Santana is sitting cross-legged on her seat with the grocery bags at her side, busily making them all peanut butter and blackberry jam sandwiches for dinner. It's a pleasant break from the monotony of the past half dozen meals, and she knows they should enjoy the variety while they still can. The jam won't be any good by tomorrow since they don't have a refrigerator, and the fruits and vegetables in the bags have already spoiled from sitting out in a hot car for so long. But they have tortilla chips, salsa, and a loaf of chewy multigrain bread to add to the food they're hoarding.

She sucks the jam off her fingers, slaps the peanut buttered bread against the jammed bread and passes the sandwich up to Karofsky, who's back in the passenger seat reading the map of Georgia and doing his best not to flex his left hand. "Eat up."

"Thanks." He takes a bite and smiles a little. "Nothing like a PBJ."

"Figures we'd get a health nut's groceries," Santana says. "Bet that just makes your day, fearless leader."

"You assume that my day hasn't been ruined thoroughly enough for something to 'make' it," Kurt says. "However, if today wasn't so horrifically bad, I'd say yes. It would make my day."

"Got clothes out of it, too," Karofsky points out. "Fresh socks. Fresh underwear. Tell me you're not happy about that."

"I'm very happy about that," Kurt says. He looks at Santana in the rearview mirror. "I hope you aren't too disappointed that you're still stuck wearing men's clothing."

"At least one of the guys was thin," Santana says. "I can work with thin." She finishes up the second sandwich and hands it to Kurt.

"Where to next?" Kurt asks Karofsky.

"We're good all the way up to Crawfordville," Karofsky says. A blob of jam drips out of the bottom of his sandwich onto the map. He wipes it off with his thumb, leaving a purple streak behind. "We've got a ways to go before any turnoff or highway change."

Kurt eats his sandwich slowly, one hand on the wheel. "Good."

"How far do you think we'll get today?" Santana asks.

"Stapleton, probably, at the rate we've been going," Karofsky says. "It doesn't put us behind too bad, though."

Santana smears a slice of bread with a thin layer of peanut butter and sticks the knife into the jam jar. "Given our luck today that means at least a half hour shy of Stapleton. Something's going to fuck things up for us."

"It's likely," Kurt says. "We also need gas again. I'm pulling off at the next station to fill up."

"We should use the gas in the trunk, too," Karofsky says. "It won't make much of a difference, but we should fill up the containers with diesel for the boat. There'll be an engine on board that we might want to top off."

"I hadn't thought of that," Kurt says. He sounds surprised, though Santana can't tell if it's because he didn't think of it or because Karofsky did. "Alright. We'll do that. Good idea."

"Gas stations are fun," Santana says. She spreads jam thickly over the peanut butter and puts another slice of bread on top. "Zombies. Shooting things. Sounds like a good time to me." She screws the lids back on the peanut butter and jam jars and takes a big bite out of her sandwich.

"Which is why once again you're on guard duty and not filling up the tank," Kurt says. "Bloodthirsty maniac."

"Sociopathic control freak," she retorts through a mouthful of food.

He stiffens in his seat. "I'm not a sociopath," he says evenly. "And you're well aware of that."

She feels the tiniest prickle of remorse. "Yeah, but you do a good impression of one," she says instead of apologizing. Kurt seems to take it in the spirit it's meant and relaxes a bit.

"There's a gas station about a mile up ahead," Karofsky says, pointing to a roadside sign that says "Gas, Food, Lodging, ¾ Mi."

"Good," Kurt says. He swerves around an abandoned car and pulls into the far right lane. "Best to get it done while it's still light out."

The gas station is isolated enough from wherever the "food and lodging" part of the turnoff might be that they get out of the car with a little less caution than they had yesterday evening. Kurt hands Karofsky a thin stack of twenty dollar bills. "You fill the tank," he says, hefting his revolver. "Santana and I will stand watch."

"Sure thing," Karofsky says. He goes around to the back and carefully tugs the containers of gas out from the bottom of the packed trunk. Santana unscrews the gas cap for him and sets the butt of the shotgun against her shoulder, taking the far side of the car this time while Kurt watches Karofsky's back.

The process goes much more smoothly this time, to Santana's disappointment. Karofsky dumps the gas into the tank, sticks eighty bucks into the money slot, and fills up the tank without any problem. The same goes for the twenty dollars' worth of diesel he pumps into the empty fuel containers. Kurt sticks them back into the trunk and they pull back out onto the access road, Karofsky breathing an audible sigh of relief that they hadn't run into any zombies while they were there.

Maybe she is a bloodthirsty maniac, but she couldn't help wishing that something interesting had happened.

They're nearing the on-ramp when a horn blares. Kurt slams on the breaks and stares through the windshield. "I don't like the look of that," he says.

Santana scoots over to see what he's talking about. There's a large gray extended cab truck parked across the entrance to the on-ramp, and standing in front of it are four determined looking white adults, probably in their mid-twenties, and a kid who can't be more than ten years old. Two of the men are casually holding rifles. Another man is holding a crowbar, and the woman, her hair hanging lank around her face, is hefting a baseball bat.

"Yeah, that doesn't look good," Karofsky agrees. "Think they're holding up other survivors for their stuff?"

"I don't doubt it for a moment," Kurt says. "Here's what we're going to do. Santana, pass Dave one of the shotguns. We're going to get out to have a friendly conversation with them. They'll probably threaten us. When I reply, I want you to cover the two holding rifles."

"What are you going to do?" Santana asks.

"Something sociopathic," Kurt says. "Dave. I need you to back me up completely on this. Just trust me when I say I'm not as far gone as it's going to look, alright?"

"Okay," Karofsky says, sounding unhappy.

Santana passes him the other shotgun. "Let's go chat with the highway robbers," she says.

They hop out of the Navigator, Karofsky and Santana holding their shotguns in what probably looks to the other group like a careless manner. Kurt holds his revolver at his side.

"Evening," one of the men with the rifles says amiably. He looks at Karofsky when he says it, probably assuming he's the one running the show.

"Good evening," Kurt replies. "How can we help you folks?"

"Well, that's the question, ain't it?" the first man says. "We're running sorta low on food and supplies, as you might expect. And we were hoping you might be neighborly enough to share some of whatever you've got in your nice big car with us. Lend a helping hand to your fellow travelers."

"We would," Kurt says, "But we only have enough for the three of us, and I'm sure you can find plenty of food at the nearest grocery store."

"Now that just doesn't seem friendly," the man says. Santana mentally dubs him "Spokesperson." "We'd sure like to get a look at what you call 'enough for three.' If you don't mind, of course."

"We mind quite a bit, actually," Kurt says. "So if you could move your truck, we'd really appreciate it, because we have a few hours of driving ahead of us before we stop for the night."

"You'll find that's gonna be a problem," Spokesperson says, tightening his grip on his rifle. "Because we don't plan on going anywhere without helping you lighten your load a bit."

"That's not going to happen," Kurt says, and at his slight nod Santana and Karofsky raise their shotguns and aim them straight at Spokesperson and Rifle Two.

Spokesperson and Rifle Two aren't far behind, and in less than a heartbeat the four of them are staring at each other from over the barrels of their guns. "You're outnumbered," Spokesperson says. "Might want to reconsider this plan of yours."

Kurt pulls back the hammer on his revolver and brings it to bear on the kid, who shrinks back against the truck in fear. "I don't think we'll be reconsidering," he says. "You, on the other hand, might want to do the safe thing and move your truck."

Baseball Bat's eyes widen. "You wouldn't," she says.

"Think so?" Kurt asks. His voice is disturbingly empty of any sort of emotion. "You might be right. But then again, you might not be. I'm willing to guess that you've been holding up survivors who aren't armed, or who are too scared to put up a fight. But here's the thing. We're willing to do whatever it takes to live through this nightmare. My friend here is a very violent person," he says, gesturing to Santana with his free hand. "And I've recently been told that I'm a sociopathic control freak. So if you want to get out of here and live to victimize another group of survivors another day, you'll throw all of your weapons over to us, get in your truck, and drive away."

Baseball Bat immediately tosses her bat away, and it rolls over to Karofsky's feet. Crowbar does likewise a second later. Spokesperson glares and throws his rifle over.

Rifle Two keeps staring at them and gripping his rifle. "Danny!" Spokesperson snaps. "Do it." With great reluctance, Rifle Two – Danny – tosses his gun at their feet.

"Get in your truck," Kurt says. He points down a side road leading away from the highway. "Drive that way. I don't want you doing anything stupid like coming after us."

Spokesperson shakes his head. "I hope the zombies make a slow meal out of you," he says bitterly, not taking his eyes off of them as he opens the driver's door and gets inside. The other three follow suit, Baseball Bat herding the kid ahead of her protectively.

Kurt, Santana and Karofsky keep their guns pointed steadily at the truck as Spokesperson starts the engine and drives away down the road that Kurt had indicated. After a minute without it making a reappearance, Kurt lowers his revolver and uncocks his revolver. "Let's get the rifles in the car and get back on the highway," he says, opening his door and climbing inside.

Karofsky bends over to pick up one of the rifles with his bad hand and winces. "You weren't really going to shoot the kid. You were bluffing, right?" he asks Kurt.

"No, I wasn't going to shoot him," Kurt says. "I told you. I haven't gone that far over the edge."

"Good," Karofsky says firmly. He and Santana get back in the car, each carrying a rifle.

Kurt waits until they've shut the doors behind them before turning the key in the ignition and starting up the on ramp. From her seat behind him, Santana can see his hands trembling slightly as he holds the steering wheel, and she wonders if Kurt meant "I don't know" when he said "No."

She wishes there was something she could do to help. Something. Anything. She settles for reaching forward and giving his shoulder a light squeeze.

"Thank you," he says in a barely audible voice.

She squeezes his shoulder again and sits back in her seat. Karofsky might think he's the sole voice of reason, but if there's one thing Santana knows for sure, it's that she understands Kurt, and Kurt needs her as much as she needs him. The same goes with Karofsky.

They're her boys, and she'll protect them.

As the last of the sunlight fades away, Kurt pulls off somewhere along GA-80 a few miles before it intersects 296. "I thought I saw a Coleman lantern in that lot of camping gear," he says quietly to Santana. "Take the headlamp and see if you can find it, please. We'll probably have a use for it soon, especially if one of us has to get up at night to pee."

"Can do, fearless leader," she says, purposefully adopting a casual tone. "You and the normal one make the bed, okay?"

Her attitude draws a faint smile from him, and she smiles back. "As you wish, savage gunslinger," he says.

"That's the spirit," she says. She hops out with her shotgun in one hand and the headlamp in the other and goes around to the trunk to rummage through the jam-packed space for the lantern.

She finds it sandwiched between one of the folding chairs and a rolled up blue tarp. "Got it," she announces, pulling it free and slamming the trunk closed.

"Great," Kurt says. "Get back in here. It's time to sleep."

"Yessir," she says, and comes back over to the open door to join them on the bed. It's been strange crashing out so early these past couple nights, but the trip has been pretty draining, and today wiped her out completely.

She closes the door behind her. Kurt lifts up the edge of the quilt, and Santana crawls underneath to collapse between him and Karofsky. "Let's not have a day like this again," she says.

"I agree completely," Kurt says wearily.

Santana scoots back into his chest and pulls his arm over her body. "You got us out of there alive," she says. Being so sincere is uncomfortable, but Kurt needs to hear it. "I don't blame you."

He pulls her in closer. "If I could choose anyone to watch my back in this hell, I'd still want you," he says. "You're just crazy enough to do it."

"Stop it, you're making me blush," she says.

"Deal with it," he tells her.

She laughs softly. "Night."

"Night," he says.

They're silent for a few minutes, and then Karofsky speaks up. "Kurt."

"Yes?" Kurt asks. He sounds cool and detached, but Santana can feel him tense behind her.

"I trust you."

Kurt relaxes. "Thank you."

"Night," Karofsky says.

"Night," Kurt and Santana reply.

It doesn't take long for Santana to fall asleep, feeling oddly safe lying between her boys in a car starting to smell like sweat and stale air, tucked firmly beneath Kurt's arm.


	4. Day Four

As with the past two mornings, Kurt is the first to wake. He removes his arm from around Santana's waist, untangles his feet from hers, and sits up slowly. Just like yesterday, she makes a little protesting noise at the lack of contact and rolls over into Karofsky's back before settling down again. Kurt walks across the bed on his knees to the space right behind the passenger seat and takes a pair of socks, boxers, and one of the smaller pairs of jeans from the laundry basket. His last clean shirt joins the pile, as do the pack of towelettes, the deodorant, and his revolver. He opens the door facing away from the highway as quietly as possible and moves off to the side to change, setting the clothes down in a neat stack beside the other items.

He kicks off his shoes for the first time since Friday afternoon and yanks his socks off, nearly choking at the overpowering smell. His jeans and underwear quickly follow. He takes a moment to revel in the feeling of his bare feet against the gritty asphalt before pulling on the fresh boxers and jeans. The jeans hang low on his hips and the bottom of the legs end a good inch above his ankles, but he feels far cleaner than he did yesterday, which is really all that matters to him. His bright green tee-shirt, which has also gone rather smelly over the past couple days, is tugged over his head to be dropped to the ground with the rest of his dirty clothes. He makes quick use of a towelette and the deodorant and pulls on his remaining shirt, a long-sleeved number in a faded delft blue. Then, with some reluctance, he sticks his feet into the clean pair of socks and steps back into his shoes. He sets the deodorant and towelettes inside the car. The revolver returns to its spot in his waistband.

He opts to leave the dirty laundry outside on the ground for now, not wanting to wake Santana or Karofsky with the pungent smell of his socks. Instead, he ducks back into the car and crawls over to the front duffel bag of food and retrieves the instant coffee can, the thermos, a plastic spoon, an open bottle of water, and a new bag of trail mix. He exits once more and sets about making coffee for the three of them, scooping in a little less of the coffee into the thermos than he had the day before and pouring a smaller portion of water over it. He screws the lid on tight and shakes it vigorously until he's certain the coffee granules have dissolved completely, and then he tears open the bag of trail mix and unscrews the thermos lid.

The coffee is cold and bitter, as usual. The chocolate pieces in the trail mix apparently melted in the heat of the car yesterday, and Kurt is glad he has the spoon with him, since it seems to be the only good way to eat the mess of peanuts, dried cranberries, and mushy chocolate. As roadside breakfasts go, at least as far as this "road trip" is concerned, it's not half bad.

He slides down the side of the car slowly until he's sitting on the asphalt, back against the right rear tire. He's so tired. He's so very tired. All night long he'd been unable to fall into a truly sound sleep, too disturbed by what he'd done yesterday to really drop off and sleep like he'd desperately needed to.

There's a line between doing what needs to be done for the sake of survival and doing what needs to be done at the expense of what could be someone else's shot at their own survival, and it's getting harder and harder for him to see that line as their drive progresses. A small part of him is scared that if he keeps going like this, he's never going to regain that clarity.

He wouldn't have shot the kid. But aiming at him, aiming at him with a cocked and loaded revolver – that he would even do that in the first place makes him wonder how much further he might go. He's already stopped caring about what likely happened to the owners of all the abandoned cars they pass on the highway. He barely cared about the stranded couple outside Harrison. He kept food from Puck, from Lauren – from Puck's mother and little sister. He weighed Karofsky's injury and risk of infection against the need to preserve water.

He's not unaware of any of it, no matter what Karofsky might think. He knows how wrong it is. And the far, far larger part of him that isn't scared witless over his behavior is clinging to his cold pragmatism by his bloody fingernails and waiting desperately for the moment he can safely let go, knowing without the slightest doubt that Santana and Karofsky will catch him when he falls.

At the start of this, he never would have dreamed that Santana would become the comrade in arms that she is now. Karofsky genuinely cares, and he's an island of calm in the midst of Kurt's unemotional cold-bloodedness and Santana's restless ferocity. He keeps them from getting too lost inside their unhealthy reactions to their losses. But Kurt gets something from Santana that Karofsky can't provide: understanding. He feels pathetically grateful to her for what she did for him yesterday, as small as it was. "I don't blame you." Not "I forgive you," but "I don't blame you," because she meant that there was nothing to forgive.

He can't keep going like this much longer. He can't have another moment like the one yesterday evening. He feels trapped inside that famous Nietzsche quote. "If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." Too much more abyss gazing and his self-control is going to fly apart.

He shakes his head in an attempt to dislodge the thoughts crowding his mind and takes a sip of coffee, raising the thermos to his lips with a trembling hand. Time to pack it all back inside for another day before Karofsky and Santana wake up. Just like yesterday. Just like the day before.

Kurt's on his last sticky spoonful of trail mix when he hears a low rustling coming from inside the car. Moments later, Karofsky steps down onto the road, gun in one hand and a stack of neatly folded clothes under his other arm. Karofsky looks around and spots Kurt sitting against the tire. "Morning," he says.

Kurt swallows his mouthful of food. "Morning." He sticks the spoon back into the bag and holds it up for Karofsky. "Breakfast."

Karofsky accepts the bag and sits down beside him. "You didn't sleep well," he says, looking Kurt over closely.

"Well enough," Kurt says. "Though you'll need to drive."

"That's fair," Karofsky says. He digs the spoon into the trail mix. "We only have half as far as usual to go today. Less than that, even."

"There's still Savannah," Kurt says. "That's the part that worries me."

"We'll do it like we did in Newport," Karofsky says. "Shoot our way through, run over the ones we don't. Plus all we're doing there is changing highways. It's not like we're going into the city."

"But you remember the zombies on the highway right before Harrison," Kurt says. "And Harrison is tiny compared to Savannah."

"You can't come up with plans for everything," Karofsky says. "We're just gonna have to do it and hope it works."

Kurt finishes his share of the coffee and passes it to Karofsky. "I don't like it."

"I don't either," Karofsky says. "But it's not like we have a choice if we want to make it to the water."

"You aren't telling me anything I don't already know," Kurt says. "I just don't like it."

"Looks like we actually agree on something," Karofsky says, and immediately looks like he wishes he could take it back. "Jesus. I'm –"

"Don't say you're sorry," Kurt says. "I know how it is."

"I am, though," Karofsky says. "Look, I do trust you. I think if we get through this it'll mostly be because of you. And I trust you not to go too far. But I don't have to like the way you do it."

"I know," Kurt says. He gestures at the stack of clothing Karofsky had brought out with him. "Fair warning, your socks will smell the worst."

"I don't doubt it," Karofsky says, shoveling another mouthful of trail mix into his mouth. He washes it down with a gulp of coffee and passes the bag and thermos back to Kurt. "Hang on to these for a sec, will you? I want to get clean."

"Of course," Kurt says.

Karofsky picks up the clothes and looks from side to side, then down at Kurt. It strikes Kurt that he must not want to change facing the highway, but he has no desire to change in front of Kurt either. But Kurt's tired and fairly comfortable and not feeling terribly accommodating at the moment. "Go ahead," he tells Karofsky. "It's not like I'm going to ogle you inappropriately. I just want the coffee to kick in so we can get back on the road."

"Yeah." Karofsky pulls his shirt over his head and turns back to the open door to get the deodorant and a towelette. "Not your type. I know."

"We're four days into a nationwide zombie outbreak, every day could be our last, and that's what you're thinking of?" Kurt asks. "Your priorities need reevaluating."

Karofsky shrugs and wipes off his armpits. "I need normal, okay? All of this, this crap we have to deal with now, it's not normal. Toothpaste and deodorant and coffee are normal. Killing zombies and driving down empty highways is not normal. The thing with you and me? It sucks, but it's normal. So excuse me if I hang on to even the shitty parts of normal life that I still have left."

Kurt knows the feeling, but he can't bring himself to think about everything he used to have. It hurts too much. It gets in the way. "You of all people don't get to hold my words or actions from before against me," he says. "I was terrified and pissed off. Six months ago I hated you. A week ago I pitied you. Now I need you. There are far more important things going on in our lives right now than whether or not I'm attracted to you or vice versa."

"It's not like I want to start anything with you in the middle of a fucking apocalypse," Karofsky says, tugging on a white V-neck tee shirt. It's a little tight around his shoulders and somewhat loose around his middle. He toes off his sneakers and unbuttons his jeans, and at the sound of the zipper being pulled down Kurt looks away to give him some semblance of privacy. "Maybe not ever. I don't know. Probably never going to be a good time for anything. Too busy with the whole making it out alive thing."

"Exactly my point," Kurt says. "First we make it to the boat. Then we make it across the ocean. Then, if it's safe on the other side, we recover. Then we grieve. After all that, maybe we'll talk. Maybe."

"Not like I have any expectations," Karofsky says. He drops back to the ground beside Kurt in dull, worn out olive green cargo pants and takes back the trail mix and thermos. "Seriously. Plus you've got issues that really worry me."

"I'm handling it," Kurt says.

"Sure." Karofsky wiggles his bare toes. "Nice to get my shoes off," he says, blatantly changing the subject.

"What's this about bare feet?" Santana asks, sticking her head out the door. "Oh, you changed. I'll be right back." She disappears back into the car.

Karofsky eats his portion as quickly as he can, following it up with his share of the coffee. "Think you can handle a shotgun today if you switch to your left side? We might need the firepower."

"Probably," Kurt says. "It's certainly worth a shot."

Santana reappears in the "Likes Boys" tee-shirt and a pair of jeans identical to Kurt's. They sit on her curvy hips much better than on Kurt's own straight ones, but the hems are long enough for her to step on and the legs are baggy all the way from her thighs to the ground. She has her shoes in her hand and a pair of white socks that are far too big for her on her feet. "Two questions," she says. "Where's the coffee, and where's the food?"

Karofsky shakes the bag of trail mix at her. "Coffee's here. Breakfast is here too."

"Awesome." She flops down on Karofsky's other side and steals the thermos and trail mix. "Hey, dessert for breakfast. I feel spoiled."

"Compared to everyone else left in the country, we're spoiled rotten," Kurt says.

"Don't I know it," Santana says. She digs into the trail mix with relish.

Kurt picks up the water bottle, stands, and walks around Santana and Karofsky's feet to go back to the open door. He retrieves his toothbrush, the toothpaste, and the big bottle of multivitamins, and he sits back down on the edge of the bed with his feet dangling out the door. "What kind of sailboat are we looking for?" he asks Karofsky, pouring a bit of water over the bristles of his toothbrush.

"I only took out boats for day trips and things like that, but what we need is something called a 'blue water' sailboat," Karofsky says. "They're heavier, sit lower in the water. I'm hoping we'll find one that's not gonna be too hard to handle."

As Kurt brushes his teeth vigorously, Santana asks, "So there's going to be a cabin, right? We won't be stuck sleeping on deck for the whole trip?"

"There'll be a cabin," Karofsky says, pulling on his clean socks and sticking his sneakers back on. "It'll be cramped for three people and all our stuff, but yeah."

Kurt spits out the toothpaste and pops a multivitamin in his mouth, washing it down with a gulp of water. "I couldn't care less if the cabin is the size of the inside of the car as long as it gets us across safely." He gets up and drops the bottle of water and the multivitamins in Karofsky's lap. "Let's wrap things up and get back on the road. I want to be there by two at the latest."

"I like that plan," Karofsky says. He takes his vitamin and gets to his feet, grabbing up his and Kurt's dirty laundry as well as his gun. "It'll give me time to show you guys the basics while it's still light out."

Santana swallows the last of the coffee and tosses away the empty bag of trail mix. "Can't wait." She sticks her shoes on and stands as well. "Tell me, fearless leader. Is it weird that I'm hoping for zombie pirates to kill on the way over?"

"Very," Kurt says. "But I won't hold it against you. The normal one might, but I promise not to judge you."

Karofsky smiles crookedly and sticks his toothbrush in his mouth. "I judge you harshly," he says around the nylon bristles. "Savage gunslinger."

"And don't you forget it." She shoulders him aside to get at her own toothbrush.

Kurt heads around to the back of the car to relieve himself while they brush their teeth. He zips up and looks down the road in the direction they'd come from. If he drew a straight line from Lima to where they were parked it was nearly eight hundred and fifty miles. They could easily tack on another two hundred for the circuitous route they'd taken. And it will all be over by this afternoon. It better be.

He goes back to the open door and grabs a towelette to wipe off his hands. "Ready to get out of here?"

"I'm all for getting gone," Santana says from the middle seat as she flips up the latch to bring the back up.

Karofsky nods and shuts Santana's door. "Can't wait."

Kurt slides into the passenger seat and buckles in as Karofsky shifts the seat back a couple inches and slams his door closed.

"Let's go steal ourselves a boat," Santana says, kicking her feet up on the console between Kurt and Karofsky's seats.

"Hell yes," Karofsky says. He starts the engine and pulls back out onto the highway. "I'm sick of driving."

None of them give voice to the worst case scenario facing them. If this doesn't work out, then driving constantly will be the least of their worries.

**

"Savannah's coming up soon," Kurt says as they roll past the turnoff for GA-307 on I-16 at eleven thirty.

Santana passes up one of the shotguns to him. "Want to keep score?"

"How do you mean?" Kurt asks her.

"You know," she says, rolling down the windows on both sides of her row of seats. "A head count. See who kills the most."

"There's no competition," Kurt says. "We all know you'll come out on top."

She smirks and sets the open box of her two boxes of shells on the seat beside her. Hell yes she'll come out on top. Like there's ever any doubt about that. "I'm just saying it could be fun. You haven't forgotten what fun is, have you?"

"It's something I have no interest in until we're safe," Kurt says. "You remember what safe is, don't you?"

She leans forward and flicks his ear. "When this is over, I'm going to get you drunk and make you loosen the fuck up. If you're very lucky I won't make you play strip poker while you're hammered."

"And you plan to do this how, exactly?" Kurt asks. "Are you going to hold me down and pour alcohol down my throat?"

"Of course not," she says. She meets Karofsky's eyes in the rearview mirror and winks. "Dave's going to hold you down while I pour alcohol down your throat."

"It's no fun if we're not playing drinking games or something," Karofsky says. "God knows what we'd do, but if we're getting smashed we're doing it right."

"Okay, so we're not ruling out strip poker," Santana says. "After all, the best part about playing it drunk is that everyone plays badly."

"You're insane and don't understand the meaning of the word 'boundaries,'" Kurt says. "I don't know why I like you."

"Yes you do," she says.

Kurt turns in his seat, and the calm, remote expression on his face softens almost imperceptibly when he looks at her. "Yes," he says. "I do."

She's tempted to reach out and touch him, to put her hand on his arm or his shoulder. But it's easier to give and get comfort in the dark when they're ready to fall asleep. She resolves to hold him back tonight. This is her Kurt, her fearless leader, and no one gets to fuck with him. Not even Kurt himself.

She looks up past Kurt into the mirror to see Karofsky, his eyes fixed on the road, looking a little jealous. There's no doubt in her mind that he wishes he had something like the connection she and Kurt share. He probably feels like their babysitter half the time, always running after them in an attempt to keep them from going too far past the realm of acceptable, nagging them to eat and sleep, staying as balanced as he can so that they don't crash and burn. But that's why they need him, even if he doesn't get them. And if he took the time to think about it, he wouldn't want to have what they have. It comes from someplace too painful to be worth being jealous of.

"We like you too, normal one," Santana says. "Right, Kurt?"

"Absolutely," Kurt says, turning back around to face the front.

"I feel so loved," Karofsky says, sounding slightly sarcastic, but the tiny furrow between his eyebrows disappears.

"We're about a half hour of normal driving time from our destination," Kurt says, looking at the map. "This gives us plenty of time to find a grocery store for one last run."

"With what bag?" Karofsky asks. "All of the ones we have are completely full."

"We can dump out the clean clothes from the laundry basket and shift the food from one of the duffel bags into it," Kurt says. "Then we'll have a bag."

"What would we do without your Spock-like brain?" Santana asks.

"If I answer that, I'll sound like I have an overinflated ego," Kurt says. "And really, Santana. A geek reference?"

"I dated Sam," she says.

Sam, who's dead, like her parents and Quinn and Artie and Mercedes. Like Finn. Like Brittany.

"Here we go," Karofsky says as they approach a huge cloverleaf sort of intersection where several highways converged and spun off in different directions. "Now entering Savannah."

"US Seventeen in a mile," Kurt says. "There's nothing to really worry about until we take the Louisville Road exit. We're going through too many city blocks to be able to avoid zombies."

"You're guaranteeing me an opportunity to shoot dozens of zombies before lunch? You know how to treat a girl," Santana says, flipping the safety off her shotgun. "If you weren't a guy I'd do you in a heartbeat."

"If I weren't a guy I'd be straight," Kurt says.

Santana shrugs. "I could talk you into experimenting."

"We'll never know," Kurt says.

"I'm gonna go ahead and point out the obvious here," Karofsky says as he steers around a green Honda Civic to merge onto US-17. "But you enjoy this way too much."

"It's enjoy it or lose my motivation," Santana says. "Pick one."

Kurt rolls down his window. "Our exit's coming up soon. Santana, get ready."

"When am I ever not ready?" Santana asks. She rolls down her own window and scoots closer, sticking the tip of the muzzle out.

"Point taken." Kurt takes Karofsky's handgun and removes the magazine to reload it. He drops in bullets, slides the magazine back in, and puts it on Karofsky's lap. "Will you be alright shooting with your left hand?"

"I'll manage," Karofsky says. "The superglue will hold. It's just gonna hurt like a bitch." He rolls his window down and picks up his gun with his left hand, keeping his right on the steering wheel. "The pain's worth it if we make it through."

"Anything is worth it if we make it through," Kurt says.

"Not everything," Karofsky says.

"Our lives and safety come first," Kurt says. "Don't lose sight of that."

"Save the argument for later, boys," Santana says. "There's our exit." She passes up the second box of shotgun shells to Kurt. "Let's kill some undead fuckers."

Kurt flips open the lid to the center console and settles the box of shells in beside the box of .50 caliber bullets. "Yes, let's."

Karofsky steps on the gas, and the car positively flies down the exit. They take the turn onto Louisville Road in a hard right. He drives straight down the middle as quickly as possible, tires straddling the yellow lines. "The faster we're through it, the faster we're safe," he says. "What's next?"

Kurt takes a second to look at the map. "Left on MLK."

As they speed along the road, Santana sees zombies practically coming out of the woodwork at the sound of a moving car. By the time they pass the first intersection, there are about a dozen per block on either side. She goes to pull the trigger and Kurt says sharply, "Not until they're closer. Save the bullets for when we need them."

"That won't be long," Karofsky says as he glances out the window. He speeds up and yanks the steering wheel left, sending them tearing down Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. "Next street?"

"Right on West River in about half a mile," Kurt says, blowing a hole through a zombie that had wandered out into the street. "I hate this city already."

Karofsky swerves around a battered VW Beetle and gets back into the middle of the street. "No fucking kidding."

"Just keep driving as fast as you can," Kurt says. "We'll be clear of them soon."

Santana shoots a zombie in running shorts and a sweat-stained tank top. "Normally I'd say slow down and let me have some fun, but I'm with you. Just get us out to the other side."

"I'm telling you," Karofsky says, "When we get on that damn boat and shove off, we're gonna actually sit back and relax, so help me god." He hangs a right on West River and pulls the trigger on his gun, catching a zombie in the cheek with a bullet. "Fuck that hurts," he gasps. "Kicks like a fucking mule."

"Next up, right on Broad and a quick left on Bay," Kurt says, consulting the map. He goes back to looking out the window, shotgun braced against his left shoulder. "We should have switched drivers before we hit Savannah," he says.

"Too late now," Karofsky says.

Kurt steadily shoots at the bolder zombies who leave the sidewalk to approach their car. When he's out he tosses it in back to Santana and takes up his revolver. "Reload for me," he says.

"On it." Santana sets her shotgun aside for a moment and reloads Kurt's as fast as she can. She passes it back and picks up her own shotgun again just in time to put a shell through a zombie's head.

Karofsky veers off onto Broad and then almost immediately onto Bay, Santana and Kurt not letting up their shooting for even a second as the streets jog back into the downtown area for two crowded blocks. "Next?" he yells over the gunfire.

"Left on East President!" Kurt shouts back.

Santana drops down beneath the open window to reload and sits back up. "It's thinning out," she says loudly. "Think we're gonna be okay."

Karofsky shoots another zombie and winces. "Thank fuck." He turns left on East President and drops his gun back in his lap, shaking out his hand.

"We're not through yet," Kurt says. "We're going past a neighborhood in a mile or so."

"Still," Karofsky says. "The worst is over."

Santana unbuckles her seatbelt and slides over to the right side of the car, rolling down that window and aiming her shotgun out it. "It's like I told you," she says. "We're just too badass to die."

"That's right," Karofsky says. "And tonight we get to celebrate our survival with hot soup and dinner at a nice, tiny table."

"I think I'm in love," Santana says. She pulls the butt of the shotgun tight against her shoulder as the first street of the residential neighborhood appears in the distance. "With the soup."

"Yeah, me too," Karofsky says. He blows past the neighborhood at what has to be seventy miles an hour, and as they leave the last of Savannah behind them, alive and unscathed, Santana collapses flat on her back on the seat and laughs.

"That was fun," she says. "That was seriously so fun."

"Sure, if you discount the fact that we could have died a painful, messy death," Kurt says, rolling up his window. "Put your seatbelt on. It would be just plain stupid to get through that only for you to die in a car accident."

She reaches up and pulls down the seatbelt, buckling it around herself without sitting up. "I'm telling you, if that was my last chance to shoot zombies, it was a damn good chance."

"Where do we go from here?" Karofsky asks Kurt.

Kurt sets his revolver and the shotgun at his feet and picks up the map again. "This street will turn into Islands Expressway," he says. "We'll take that out to Eighty East. It'll get us all the way down to the water's edge."

"I remember how to get to the pier we used from there," Karofsky says. "I think there's a corner store near there, too."

"Judging by the size of the town, I think it's safe to say it will be like Wapakoneta," Kurt says. "There probably won't be a whole lot of zombies to deal with."

"That sounds perfect," Karofsky says, and for once Santana agrees.

Less than fifteen minutes later, Karofsky stops the car in front of the corner store in question. Santana dumps the clean clothes onto the seat and heaves the heavy duffel bag up, unzipping it and pouring out jars of peanut butter, cans of soup, bags of trail mix, and dozens of energy bars into the laundry basket. "Time to get food," she says. She opens her door and jumps out, bag in one hand and shotgun in the other. Karofsky and Kurt join her on the empty street, and they duck into the store with guns at the ready. As they had in Wapakoneta, they split up to check the aisles for zombies.

"Clear," Santana says.

"Same here," Kurt says, and Karofsky echoes his words.

"More water?" Karofsky asks Kurt.

Kurt nods. "I'll get the water," he says. "You and Santana fill the bag."

"I should do it," Karofsky says. "I'm the strongest."

"And your hand needs to heal before you can do any more heavy lifting," Kurt tells him. "Help Santana." He set off to the back of the store before Karofsky could argue further.

"My aisle's the food one," Karofsky says. "Wanna get the bag over here?"

"Oh, I really want to," Santana says. She goes over to his aisle and drops the bag at his feet. "More of the same?"

"And canned fruits and vegetables," Karofsky says, pulling a big can of peaches in light syrup off the shelf. "Another few things of instant coffee, too. We're probably gonna want it."

They pull entire armfuls of food off the shelves to stick in the bag, not discriminating between types of soup or vegetables or flavors of energy bars. Another big loaf of bread makes it into the bag, as do three boxes of creamer and a giant box of sugar packets. When it's finally full, Karofsky zips it back up and slings the strap over his shoulder. "My turn to say 'go help Kurt," he says. "I'm gonna take this back to the car."

"Sure thing," Santana says. She leaves him to it and heads to the back to grab the last pack of water.

Kurt shifts his grip on his own pack as he stands by the hip high stack beside him. "Let's shift this out to the car," he says.

"At your command, fearless leader," she says, and he almost smiles at that.

"I can't call you savage gunslinger anymore," he says, walking out the door with her at his side. "Hopefully not ever again, but at least not for another several dozen days."

"I'm sure you'll come up with something," she says. They deposit the water into the back seat beside the laundry basket and go back inside to get another load.

"I'm sure I will," he says.

Santana would swear that he honestly sounded just the tiniest bit fond at that moment. It gives her hope, and not just for him, but for herself. This wouldn't be the end for them. Not if she's okay with leaving the zombies behind and he's expressing even a hint of emotion. They'd be okay, the both of them. They have to be.

**

"That's the last of it," Santana says as she comes back from the closet where she'd stuffed the clean laundry. She's still vibrating with energy, walking across the cabin floor from one end to the other as if to reassure herself that there's actually standing room in their new home.

Dave stands in the cramped galley, opening the second of two large cans of chili he and Santana had pulled off the shelves. He feels relaxed for the first time in days. The _Don Quixote_ had been unmoored and anchored a good twenty yards away from the dock, everything had been put away with little trouble, the gas and water tanks were full, and Santana and Kurt had caught on to the basics of sailing with relative ease. They'd fallen onto the queen sized berth toward the bow of the boat, made use of the onboard toilet with great relief, and almost kissed the door to the tiny shower. Kurt had broken out the little pot from the camping gear, and now Dave is making dinner for the three of them as the sun is starting to set.

He'd chosen a good boat, a sturdy thirty-five footer that looked a bit chubbier than the others moored nearby. It wouldn't get them there as fast, but it would be reliable, and the sails looked like they were in good condition. And he wouldn't admit it, but he was swayed by the name. A boat named after an adventurer who never let impossible odds get in his way seems appropriate for what they're doing. "We should eat up top," he says. "It'd be nice to sit on the deck and just kick back."

"I'm with you," Santana says. "I'm sure Kurt is too, seeing as he hasn't come down for about half an hour. I think he's brooding."

Dave dumps the two cans of chili into the pot and turns up the heat on the little stove. "Can you blame him?"

"Not a bit," Santana says. She edges past him and opens up the overhead cabinets, peering inside curiously. "So what did the last owner leave us?"

"A lot of what we already have," Dave says. "He must've made pretty regular trips out. But there's a carton of fresh orange juice in the fridge." It could barely be called a fridge, it was so small, but it would work for keeping leftovers from spoiling.

"And vodka," Santana says. "Not the shitty vodka, either." She looks at it speculatively.

"What are you thinking?" he asks her.

"It can wait until after dinner," she says. She gets out the loaf of multigrain bread, takes out a few slices, and sets them on the counter beside the empty cans. "I'll see you topside. Bring the bread." She takes the stairs two at a time, leaving Dave alone in the galley once more.

He stirs the chili with a metal spoon, happy to finally have real silverware, and bends over to find bowls and plates in the cabinets beneath the counter. There's a small stack of cereal sized bowls and mid-sized plates, and he grabs three of each. He takes out two more spoons and puts them down on the plates beside the bowls, tucking a slice of bread right next to them. The chili begins to bubble, and he turns off the burner and picks up the pot by its handles. He pours an equal amount into each bowl and sets the pot in the sink, giving it a cursory rinse before the chili dries onto the sides. With great care, he gathers up all three plates and heads up the stairs, glad he has hands big enough to keep from spilling them.

"That smells amazing," Santana says as Dave sets the plates down at the little table she and Kurt are sitting at. The lantern sits right at the edge toward the railing, illuminating the immediate area and shining a light on the water below. A half empty bottle of water sits beside it.

"Anything would smell amazing after what we've been eating," Kurt says. He offers Dave another one of his faint smiles. "Thanks for cooking."

"No problem," Dave says, sitting down next to him. He picks up his spoon, and Santana smacks him lightly across the knuckles with her own.

"Thanksgiving first," she says, holding her hands out to Kurt and Dave.

"I don't believe in god," Kurt says.

"Not that kind of thanksgiving," she says. "Come on." They take her hands, and clasp hands loosely themselves. "Good boys," she says.

"Get on with it," Kurt says.

"You're so impatient," she says. She looks at Dave. "Thank you for making sure none of us lost it."

There's a long pause, and Dave realizes she's waiting for him to say something. He turns to Kurt and says, "Thank you for getting us here. We wouldn't have made it without you."

Kurt's hand twitches in his, but he shows no other reaction. "Thank you for keeping us safe," he tells Santana.

She lets go of their hands. "Now we can eat."

Kurt drops Dave's hand and digs into the chili. "This is good," he says.

"I think I have a new favorite food," Santana says. She sticks an overloaded spoonful in her mouth and hums with pleasure. "Chili con velero."

"I assume that means boat," Kurt says.

"Sailboat," Santana says. "It should really be chili en un velero, but whatever. That doesn't have the same ring to it."

"We wouldn't really know," Dave says. "We took French." At a school they're never going to go back to.

"I do agree with you, though," Kurt says to Santana. "It does taste wonderful."

They eat quickly, mopping up the chili with their bread and passing around the water bottle when they're done.

Santana stands and picks up her dishes, tucking the bottle of water under her arm. "Everyone downstairs," she says. "We have something we need to do."

Kurt stands as well, taking up both his dishes and the lantern. "Is this something I'll enjoy?"

"No," Santana says. "None of us will." She disappears down the stairs. After a moment, Kurt follows.

Dave brings up the rear with his own bowl and plate. Down in the cabin, Santana's in the galley sticking the dishes in the sink and running a little water over the bowls. She takes Dave's and adds them to the pile. "Go sit on the couch," she says, jerking her thumb over her shoulder.

He takes the five steps across to the little built in couch that Kurt's sitting on and takes a seat at his side, squeezing in behind the tiny table. "Know what she has planned?" he asks.

"I have a guess," Kurt says.

Santana comes over with the carton of orange juice in one hand. She's carrying three plastic cups and the bottle of vodka in the other. "We're going to need alcohol for this," she says, sitting in the seat across from them. She plunks down the orange juice and vodka and lines up the cups in a row. "A lot of alcohol."

"We can't sail with hangovers," Dave said.

"Deal," Santana says. She pours orange juice into each cup and follows it with a generous amount of vodka. "We need to get this out." She pushes the full cups over to Dave and Kurt. "Let's talk."

"I don't want to talk," Kurt says flatly.

"You said you'd process this crap when you were safe," Santana says. "I don't want to do this either. But we're as safe as we're going to get right now, and if we don't deal with this – with my crap, with your crap, hell, with Dave's crap – we're just going to keep getting worse. I don't want to keep hurting. And you matter to me, fearless leader. I don't want you to keep hurting, too."

"I'm not hurting," Kurt says. "This works. It doesn't hurt if I don't care."

She stretches her hand across the table, reaching for his own. "Do you care about me?" she asks.

He sighs and takes her hand again. "You know I do."

"Then do it for me," she says. "I need this. I don't want to. I really, really don't want to. But we all need this."

Kurt sags back in his seat and picks up his cup. "Fine. But someone else goes first."

Santana looks to Dave. "You go first," she says. "You're the least screwed up."

Dave takes a large gulp and thinks of where to start. "What gets to me is that I don't know what happened to any of them," he says. "Not my parents, not my friends, not anyone. There's no closure. Are they dead? Are they zombies? Did they make it out? It's all I can think about every night. I took Kurt's cell phone back, you know. And every night I've checked it to see if my dad's called back, or if Z's texted an answer, and they never have. I'm freaking out about what's going to happen when the battery dies. I just keep hoping, and I know it's pointless because they're either dead or they're fucking zombies, but I just – if I don't know what happened, then I can't stop hoping." He drains his cup and holds it out for more. "The only zombies I saw that I knew were my neighbors, and that was bad enough for me. I can't fucking imagine where my head would be if it'd been my parents or my friends."

Santana fills his cup again, adding a bit more vodka this time. She lifts her cup to her lips and drinks deeply, not setting it down until it's empty. She pours herself another and begins to talk. "I was sitting on Brittany's front porch, waiting for her to come home," she says. "I wanted to try to make things right. I'd made her mad by not wanting to come out. I had to apologize. So she drives up, and when she gets out of her car I stand up to go and talk to her. But then I see the zombies." She takes another gulp and blinks rapidly, her eyes wet. "Two of them. And they get to Britt before I even get off the porch. And they just – tear into her, and she's screaming so loudly, and I freeze." She finishes her drink and refills her cup a second time, tears spilling out her eyes and her mouth twisted in self-loathing. "I fucking freeze. Britt's being killed and I can't move, I'm so scared. Then I guess something else catches their attention, because they drop her to the fucking ground and go off down the street. And then, when it's just too fucking late to do anything to help her, then I can get off the porch and run to her, and she doesn't even look like Britt anymore, and she's barely alive, and I pull her into my arms and she fucking dies. I let her die because I was a fucking coward."

Dave swallows down his drink in one gulp reflexively, as does Kurt. Dave takes Kurt's cup and refills them both, pushing Kurt's back over.

"I don't even know how I got out of there alive," Santana says. "One minute I was on the ground holding Britt and the next minute Mike and Tina were hauling me into Mr. Berry's car. I figure they must have been driving to everyone's houses to see who was still alive." She wipes her eyes with the heel of her palm and takes a drink from her third cup.

Kurt knocks back his drink and passes his cup to Dave, and Dave fills it back up. Kurt drains it a second time and hands it over again. When he has his third drink in his hand, he closes his eyes and says reluctantly, "I was at the garage first. One of the employees turned into a zombie. He started eating a customer. I shot him with my dad's shotgun. I held her hand as she died. Then I went home." He takes a long drink. "When I went inside, all I could think of was that I needed to make sure my family was safe, and we needed to pack up everything useful and hit the road. That was my plan. It was a good plan. But then it all went to hell. I was on my way past the dining room, on my way to the living room to check and see if they were where they usually were in the afternoon, when I heard something. It sounded like a chair being knocked over. So I went to investigate." He empties his cup, giving it back to Dave, and waits until it's back in his hand before starting again. "Dad and Carole were inside. But they weren't –" He takes an unsteady breath. "They weren't my dad and Carole anymore. And I stood there in the doorway holding the shotgun, and they kept getting closer, and I just – I had to. And it was so loud. So messy. And there was blood all over the carpet. And I couldn't stop thinking that just that morning we'd had breakfast together."

He takes another gulp and smiles bitterly as tears leak from the corners of his closed eyes. "I closed the door behind them and hoped that that would be the end of it. And then Finn came home." He opens his eyes and stares at the wall behind Santana's head. "He was so freaked out and confused. 'Dude,' he'd said, 'There are fucking zombies out there.' And he held out his arm and said, 'One of them bit me.'" He drinks from his cup. "He had no idea what that meant. He just knew it hurt. And I couldn't bring myself to do the right thing and tell him what was going to happen so he could decide for himself what to do. I couldn't shoot my brother while he was still human, even though I knew it would prevent him from a worse fate. So I said, 'Don't worry. There's another shotgun in the basement. It's on the top shelf, so I can't reach it.' And he said, 'Okay. I'll get it.' Because he was a good brother, and he thought that we could get through it together. And I followed him downstairs, and when he went inside, I shut the door, and I locked him in. And while he was down in the basement yelling to be let out, asking me why I would do that, I packed with his shouts in my ears."

He, Santana, and Dave all drain their cups at that.

"So I shut it out, all of it," he says. "Because I didn't just lose them. I killed them. And I did even worse to Finn. And just thinking about it – just thinking about it makes me feel like a monster."

Kurt slams his cup down on the table and stands, tears running down his otherwise blank face. Santana scrambles to her feet, and she steps into his path as he makes his way toward the stairs. He looks down at her tear-streaked face and long seconds pass. Then his face crumples and he falls to his knees, shaking like a leaf as he sobs. Santana drops to her knees as well and wraps her arms around his shoulders, weeping into the collar of his shirt. He clutches her back and cries into her hair. Dave watches helplessly as his throat constricts and his eyes fill with tears, unsure what he could possibly do to help them and heartbroken at having to see it. Santana removes one arm and flings it out in Dave's direction, making a grabbing motion with her hand, and Dave gets out from behind the table as fast as he can and kneels on the floor beside them. They both grab at his tee-shirt and pull him into the hug, and he puts his arms around them both and cries with them.

After what seems like ages, they stagger to their feet, still tangled up in each other's arms, and make their unsteady, teary way to the berth at the bow. They kick off their shoes and strip down to their shirts and underwear with unsteady hands and collapse onto the bed together. Dave has the presence of mind to slap the light switch off, and they pull each other close, arms slung across stomachs and feet hooked over ankles and noses pressed against collar bones.

"You're no coward," Kurt tells Santana, speaking into Dave's jaw.

Dave feels a small hand grip his side as Santana hugs them both. "You're no monster."

"We'll get through this," Dave says.

"How?" Santana asks in a broken voice.

Dave blinks back tears. "We have each other."

Kurt's the one to give them both one armed hugs this time. "I'm so glad we do."

Once again, no one says goodnight. But as Dave drops off into an exhausted sleep, he can't help thinking that the lack of goodnight means far more tonight than any wishes for a pleasant sleep ever will.


	5. Day Sixteen

The first thing Santana is aware of is someone crawling into bed beside her. A slightly damp arm snakes around her stomach, and the person cuddles in close at her back. "Morning, Santana," a soft voice says. "Time to get up."

She yawns and turns over to face Kurt. "My turn?"

"Your turn," he says. He kisses her forehead, his short, scraggly whiskers tickling her skin. "I made you breakfast and coffee. Two creamers, one sugar."

"You're the best," she says, sitting up and sliding her fingers through his wet hair. "Get some sleep. We'll wake you at noon."

"I like the sound of that," he says, and he burrows deeper under the quilt, pulling it around his body and turning his face into the pillow. "Night."

"Night."

She gets out of bed and pads over to the closet to find her clothes for the day, absentmindedly pressing her hand low against her abs as a dull ache deep inside makes its presence known. She's probably just hungry. They're all straddling the line between sort of hungry and plain old hungry lately, but it can't be helped, not even with all the food they scavenged. She steals Kurt's long-sleeved shirt and slips into a pair of jeans before tugging on oversized socks and shoving her feet into her shoes. The last thing she takes is a big fleece lined coat with an enormous hood, and she zips it up all the way to her neck. Her cup of coffee and peanut butter sandwich are in the galley, as is a peanut butter energy bar and a cup of hot chicken noodle soup. She finishes off half of the coffee right there before taking her breakfast and Dave's late lunch up to the deck.

It's impossible to think of him as Karofsky now. Not after everything they've shared and lived through together. Especially not after they all got sloshed and fell to pieces in each other's arms. He's hers as much as Kurt is.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Dave greets her as she sits down at the table across from him in the dark of the early morning. The only light visible as far as the eye can see is the dim light bulb above the stairs heading below deck and the lantern they've secured to the table with bungee cords. "Sleep well?"

"Like a rock," she says, handing him the soup and energy bar. "Sixteen hour days suck."

"You're telling me," he agrees. He takes a long drink from his cup and chews with a thoughtful look on his face. "We're probably making good time, though." As if to emphasize his claim, the bright red ribbons tied to the shrouds snap loudly as they flutter in the wind.

"Where do you think we are?" she asks.

"Off Maryland or Delaware, I guess," he says. "If we keep going like this without any trouble, we'll hit land in a month and a half or so."

"So, two months, then," she says. "Two and a half." She bites into her sandwich and leans against the rail, wrapping her free hand around her cup of coffee to warm her fingers.

"Most likely," Dave says.

They're doing better than any of them had thought they would so far. Dave had found the autopilot about a day into the voyage, and between that and the wind vane they were pretty set, but being raw beginners none of them felt entirely comfortable with leaving the sails unsupervised for too long. They'd worked out a system where they rotated sleeping for eight hours so that two of them could be awake and ready to handle any issues that cropped up at all times. Mostly they'd both be on deck, but sometimes one of them would head down to the cabin to get food or to spend another frustrating half hour trying to get the VHF radio to work.

"Still going north?"

Dave finishes his soup and unwraps his energy bar while he swallows the last large mouthful of broth and noodles. "Northeast," he says. "I checked the compass. We're not heading east for at least another three or four weeks."

None of them had been able to make much sense of the nautical charts they'd found, but the small card with the trade winds had been fairly self-explanatory, and they were following the westerlies up and around to Europe. After some trial and error, they'd discovered that the most efficient way to sail was with the wind coming in from behind them at an angle instead of sailing straight downwind. Like they had with shooting, they'd picked up sailing quickly out of necessity.

Santana polishes off her sandwich and washes it down with her coffee. "Want the rest?" she asks, holding out the cup with one last gulp left.

"You're a goddess," he says as he takes it from her and knocks back the last of the coffee. "If you ever get tired of wishing Kurt was a lesbian, just know I'd seriously have the hots for you if you were a gay guy."

"Flatterer." She gives him an exaggerated flirtatious look. "Tell you what. If I ever spontaneously grow a dick and start wanting to bone guys, you'll be the first notch on my bedpost."

"Break my heart, why don't you," he says, laughing.

"What can I say? I'm a use 'em and lose 'em kind of girl," she says.

He eats his energy bar and stands, collecting their cups. "I'll be back in a minute," he says, and he goes down to the cabin to drop their dishes in the sink to be washed later.

Santana threads her arm through the brass railing running along the edge of the boat and watches the sails lazily as the light wind fills them and puffs them out into concave triangles. There's no sign that she'll have to get up and take the tiller or trim the sails any time soon, thank god. She's not nearly awake enough to do either one well right now. The wind vane is a wonderful thing, even if they do need to keep an eye on things all the time.

The waves slosh against the sides as the sailboat goes up and down, and cold sea spray mists her face and bare hand. Despite the stress of the trip having put a pit in her stomach that hasn't let up since they left shore, she finds the four to five am stretch with Dave oddly relaxing. The same goes for her slow, sleepy evenings with Kurt. They'll always be her boys, her brothers, the closest they'll ever have to having family again, for however long or short the rest of their lives are.

Dave comes back and sits right next to her on the short bench, wrapping an arm around her waist. "What are you thinking about?"

"Just thinking that the next boat we steal better be a yacht," Santana says. She lays her head on his shoulder. "If we're going to be pirates, we should travel in style."

"Yo ho ho and a bottle of top shelf vodka," he quips. "Arr, matey."

"Swab the deck, you lily-livered cur," she says.

He snickers. "Davy Jones' locker, keelhauling, and something about bilges," he says. "And now I'm out of piratey stuff."

"Me too," she says. She sighs and says more seriously, "How many of us do you think are left?"

"Americans?" he asks. "Not a lot. There are always tourists and naval ships and all that. They wouldn't have been affected." They hoped.

"God, the Bermuda shorts crowd and the fucking military," Santana says. "I can't wait to see our people again."

"I want to know where the hell we're all gonna go," Dave says. "It's not like the UN's gonna hand what's left of the US an unpopulated piece of land and let us start up our country again, not with all the other affected countries being in the same boat."

"That's why piracy's the way to go," she says. "Obviously, we're going to need a cannon."

"Obviously," he says. "And a working radio."

"Still no luck?" she asks.

"None," he says. "I don't get it. We have autopilot, a solar panel, an alternator, and a freshwater maker, but the GPS and the VHF are completely fucked. Makes me wonder how often this guy took his boat out."

"He probably just lived in it right at the dock," Santana says.

"Uh-huh." The wind shifts slightly, and Dave takes his arm away and stands, going over to the mainsail. "Get the tiller and take us right just a little."

"Sure thing," she says, pulling her arm free of the railing and scooting out from the bench.

She stands to the side of the tiller and tilts it about an inch to the right. She holds it steady in both hands as Dave lets out the mainsail until it's flapping loosely in the wind. He tightens it again, and when it stops he looks up at the ribbons in the shrouds and nods to Santana. "We're good again," he says, and Santana lets go of the tiller.

"We should get it off autopilot and save the gas," Santana says. "I'm awake enough to help handle it now."

"Let's give it another hour," Dave says. "It'll be better to switch off when it's light out."

Santana goes back to the little table and perches on the edge, the toes of her shoes just barely touching the deck. "Are you as bored as I am yet?"

"Definitely," he says. He takes a seat at the bench and looks up at her in disapproval. "You shouldn't do that. Especially without a life vest."

"You'll catch me," she says confidently, grabbing a fistful of his thick oatmeal colored sweater. "If you don't, Kurt will kill you. And so will I once I get back on board."

Dave sighs and sets his hand firmly over her knee. "Just try not to need to do any tacking while I'm asleep. If the boom hits you or Kurt we're pretty much screwed."

"It's so sweet how much you worry," she says. "It's almost like you like me."

"God no," he says, but he grins and squeezes her knee. "I can't stand you."

"The feeling's mutual," she says. She lets go of his sweater and slides her hand up to hang on to him by the back of his neck. "You're a pain in the ass and I'd drop you off the side in a second if we didn't need you."

"Keep sweet talking me," he says. "I'm loving it."

Santana laughs. "You're the kind of guy who's going to end up falling head over heels for the first hot boy who insults you, aren't you?"

"You have no idea," he says, sounding a bit wistful.

Oh, right. That one was probably a little too accurate to be comfortable. "Want to build our house some more?" she asks to distract him.

He gives her a look that says he sees right through her, but he goes along with it. "Where are we at since yesterday?"

"Kurt added a moat and a drawbridge," she says. "And I added a stable with horses."

"And me and Kurt decided on a huge fireplace and big bay windows on the second floor," Dave says.

"Oh, I like that," she says. "Okay. Let's have big, fluffy rugs in every room, so we can walk around the house barefoot all day."

Dave nods. "That sounds nice. Um, an open floor plan, so we don't feel closed in."

"Lots of lights everywhere," Santana says.

"A big, squishy sofa that we can all sit on and watch movies together," Dave says. " _Not_ zombie movies."

Santana shudders and scoots closer, pressing her side against Dave's head. "Ugh. Never again."

"They'd either piss me off or scare the piss out of me," he says. "I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know? Like we get to safety, and we're not trying to survive every day, and then what? I feel like I'm a basket case waiting to happen."

They never talked about it directly, or said what they were really afraid of out loud, but they all knew what they meant. All three of them did.

"I'm worried about how Kurt will handle it," she says.

"I'm worried about both of you." He leans his head into her ribcage and closes his eyes. "Man that got depressing fast. Want to keep building our house or hold off until our next shift?"

Santana gives his neck a one handed massage. "Let's wait," she says. "I need to save some ideas to share with Kurt."

"That would make him happy," he says, groaning softly as Santana's thumb digs into a knot. "How do you think he's doing?"

"Better," she says. She works at the knot for a few seconds and moves her fingers up to his scalp to rub at the back of his head. "He kissed my forehead when he woke me up."

"He laughed last night," Dave says. "I didn't make a big deal out of it in case he stopped, but god. It was just…"

"I know." She takes her hand away and sets it on top of Dave's. "We play games to make the shift go faster. I tell myself it's just for Kurt, but it makes me feel better, too. We need – _I_ need – to have some kind of break from all of this, even if it's just building our house or playing Twenty Questions or Go Fish or poker."

"We're going to make it," he says with conviction. "We're going to make it, and we're going to get better, and we're going to get our goddamn house and live until we're ninety and never eat canned food again."

She slips off the table and bends down to kiss his cheek. "You're such an optimist," she says. "Never change."

"Okay," he says agreeably. He smirks up at her and adds, "You need to change your breath, though. Smells like something died in your mouth."

"Bastard." She tugs on his short beard and straightens. "I'll be right back."

"You know where to find me," he says.

"I like that about this boat," she says. With a last touch of her hand to his shoulder, she heads down to the cabin to brush her teeth, pressing her hand low against her belly for the second time this morning. Fucking hunger pangs won't let up. She knows it's only going to get worse.

As she treads quietly across the floor, she takes a quick look toward the bow to see if Kurt's sleeping well. He seems to be soundly asleep in the darkened alcove, though instead of sleeping stretched out on his side like he had in the car, he's curled into a ball in the middle of the bed clutching the pillow to his chest. He trembles slightly every few seconds, caught in a dream that Santana would probably wake screaming from. It's so tempting to join him on the bed to see if she can pull him out of it, but she doesn't want to make him miss even a minute of his sleep.

She misses sleeping with her boys so much. She can't wait for their boat to dock so they can all fall into bed together again.

And they will, because they're going to make it, and get better, and get their house, and live until they're ninety, and never eat canned food again.

**

"Lemonade," Kurt says, locking eyes with Santana across the table.

"Limoncello," she says.

Kurt smiles slightly. "Violin."

"Violets," Santana says quickly.

"Violent Femmes," Kurt counters.

"Femme fatale," Santana says, and groans.

"Fatality," Kurt finishes. "We did it again."

"How do we always end up with death, doom, and destruction?" she asks him. "We're like a word association statistical anomaly."

"It's on our minds," Kurt says. "It's understandable."

It's too understandable, understandable to the point of being a nearly physical pain in his heart that's with him every hour of every day. Sometimes he wants to just about kill Santana for making him deal with the events in Lima – and wasn't that a nice euphemism – before he was ready. Being cold was so much easier than this constant grief that's settled under his skin like it plans on staying there forever. But she helped put him back together when he broke down, and she didn't argue when he went back to being as calm and rational and practical as he could manage to be. Instead, she touches him, and teases him, and does her best to distract him from his thoughts.

"It won't always be the main thing we think about," she says, but she sighs and picks at her plate of string beans and tuna, fresh out of the can. "It can't hurt forever."

Kurt knows Santana inside and out by now. He knows how to read between the lines. Losing Brittany can't hurt forever. Losing family can't hurt forever. "Yes it can," he says. He spears a few string beans with his fork and shakes his head. "It will. Maybe not as badly as it does now, but it will, and you know it."

"Note to self," she says as he eats the forkful of string beans. "Never ask you to cheer me up."

She doesn't sound angry, so Kurt figures he's been given a pass on his negative opinion. But then, she's always giving him passes now. "I'm sorry," he says anyway.

"It's fine," she says. "Debbie Downer." She smiles and takes a bite of tuna.

"If you insist," he says. "But I won't answer to it."

"I wouldn't expect you to answer to anything but fearless leader," she says.

"Or Kurt," he says. "Kurt works."

"Nah." She kicks his foot with her own under the table and says, "I don't care what you say. You're still an obsessively well organized, no nonsense kind of guy. You have back up plans for your back up plans. The shifts? The food? The time limits on showers? Dave might know more about sailing, but you're the man with the plans."

Kurt shrugs. "I do what I can. That's all."

It's both a relief and a burden to still be trusted with making decisions. For a while he suspected that Santana and Dave were just trying to help him feel better, but he realized fairly quickly that they wouldn't do that with their lives at stake. But there they are, asking him to plan and organize instead of letting him throw it aside and drown in his sorrow – making him do what needs doing instead of what he wants to do. It's both, he thinks. They're good for him.

"Yeah, well, you're good at it," Santana says. "I mean, together we make one fully functional person, baggage not included. Brains, heart, and balls."

"Are you the heart, or is Dave?" Kurt asks. He scrapes the side of his fork against the plate to pick up the little pieces of tuna left behind. There's no sense in wasting good food.

"Don't play stupid," Santana says. "I'm the balls. Obviously."

"That makes entirely too much sense," Kurt tells her. "It's disturbing, but it makes sense."

"Of course it does," she says. She takes another few bites and tells him seriously, "You need to get a break from those nightmares."

Kurt refocuses on his plate. "I'm fine."

"Don't give me that crap," she says. "I know you're having nightmares. You know how I know you're having nightmares? I'm having nightmares. And if I'm having them, then you definitely are." He opens his mouth to argue and she stops him with a sharp look. "Seriously. Don't even try to bullshit me."

"Yes, okay. I'm having nightmares," he says crabbily. "But I'm sleeping. The alternative is no nightmares and no sleep." If he wasn't needed to function and take shifts and be useful, he'd never sleep another moment of his life. The nightmares are relentless, full of blood and gunshots and the bodies of everyone he loves. But he's sleeping.

"We need to do something about it," she says.

"Like what?" he asks. "I don't see a therapist on board, so we can't talk it out. We could drink ourselves to sleep, but alcohol makes the nightmares worse, and we're all too young for alcoholism. There aren't any sleeping pills. Not that we'd want them, since we can't take shifts while we're groggy from the medication. So tell me. What do we do?"

"We talk it out with each other," she says. "And if we don't want to talk about it, then we talk about something else until we feel better. So?"

"So we're not talking about the nightmares," he says. "Pick something else."

Santana points her fork at his plate and says, "Eat. Then we'll enjoy a nice sunset, talk about nice, fun things, and pretend like everything's just fine. Because faking it till you make it works so well."

"Can the sarcasm," he says, but he finishes the last of his string beans and sets his plate aside. "Alright. What nice, fun things are we going to talk about?"

"Look at the sunset first," she says.

Kurt looks over the railing at the sinking sun obediently. It's not a particularly inspiring or breathtaking sunset; instead of brilliant orange and scarlet streaks painting the sky there's just a light peachy glow along the horizon. What does make his heart skip a beat, as it always does when he actually looks past the confines of the boat, is the endless water surrounding them on all sides, not even a hint of land in sight.

They're on the ocean. They actually made it to the second leg of his insane, potentially suicidal plan to reach safety. There is no end to the number of ways things can go wrong – they could capsize, they could drown, they could run out of food, they could hit a storm – but they're here, away from land, and that's the only reason they're able to sit and admire the sunset fifteen days after their world ended. So maybe it is just a little breathtaking.

"There we go," Santana says, and he realizes that he's smiling a little. "See? We've made it another day."

"You do know that you've gone way past the point of ever being able to convince me that you're a coldhearted bitch who hates everyone ever again," Kurt says.

"That's where you're wrong," she says. "I _am_ a coldhearted bitch, and I do hate everyone. But you and Dave aren't everyone."

"We may as well be, considering the circumstances," he says. "There aren't a whole lot of people left to fill that 'everyone' category."

"You're playing stupid on purpose," she says.

Of course he is. "Why would I do that?" he asks.

"So that you can avoid talking about you and focus on talking about me instead," she says.

He knocks his foot against hers, and she kicks him lightly back. "That does sound like a good idea," he says. "Since it's apparently working, I think I'll take advantage of it."

"Pass," she says. "Want to play Twenty Questions?"

"God no," he says. "We have the same luck with that as we do with word association." Again, it makes sense. Thinking of a person, place or thing from before all of this happened just makes them miss it that much more. And there are only so many times you can think of canned food, a boat, the ocean, bullets, and guns before the game stops being even the tiniest bit entertaining.

She doesn't even bother suggesting I Spy, for obvious reasons. "Poker?" she asks.

"We lost half the face cards to the ocean yesterday, remember?" he reminds her. "I doubt the last owner stashed a second deck away somewhere."

"So what do you want to do, then?" she asks. "There has to be something."

He rubs his forehead wearily. "You won't be satisfied with just sitting and keeping an eye on the sails, will you?"

"Not if just sitting means you have more time to get lost inside your head," she says. "That's a no-no."

"Okay, okay," he says. "You win. Let's, um, build our house."

She looks at him expectantly, and Kurt scoots over to where the bench meets the side of the boat. He turns and straddles his seat with his back to the side. She gets up from her side of the table and sits in front of him, her back to his chest and her fingers laced through his across her stomach. "You start," she says once she's comfortable.

"I want a big, sunken whirlpool bathtub," Kurt says. "The entire room should be done in white marble, with mirrors everywhere. I want to be able to bathe for as long as I feel like and not have to take one minute showers."

"That sounds fancy," Santana says. "I don't think I'd ever get out."

"You'll be in charge of paying the utility bill, then," he says.

"It would be worth it," she says. "And I want a hammock in the yard. Big enough for two."

"Under trees or out in the sun?"

"Half and half," she says. "Or one for each."

"Let's go crazy and have three. It's not like we have a budget to stick to," Kurt says. "Alright, I want a giant chandelier above the dining table. Not one of those old-fashioned crystal ones, but a modern glass one."

"Pretty," she says. "Um."

"Um what?" he asks her.

She says reluctantly, "I want connecting doors between all the bedrooms. And king sized beds in every one."

"I miss it, too," he says. He knows that she knows they both mean sleeping together. "Okay. Let's do that. That will be the first thing we do."

Santana squeezes his fingers and turns her face against the raised collar of his jacket. "You know you and Dave are going to be stuck with me forever, right? I mean, worst case scenario is that there's nothing left on the other side and we're all going to die together, but even if things turn out for the best, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to go do my own thing. Maybe you guys will fall madly in love or something and want lots of alone time, but you're going to have to put up with a permanent houseguest in your love shack if you do."

"First of all," Kurt says, "You're wrong to assume that I'll ever want you to leave. Secondly, Dave and I are not and likely never will be anywhere near madly in love."

"Only a matter of time," she says. "And come on, tell me honestly. Do you think there's ever going to be another person in our lives who will really get what we've been through together? It's just the three of us now."

Kurt pulls her closer. "That's true, yes. It's just us. But that's all we need right now, don't you think?"

"For now," she says. "But I want to do all the things I was looking forward to doing before everything happened, and even if there's still civilization on the other side of the ocean, a lot of it's probably out of the question, because this whole thing has probably screwed with our heads in ways we don't even realize yet. I wanted to live in a big city, go to college, marry my dream girl. I don't see any of that happening now. It's – Britt's gone, you know? It's going to take me the rest of my life to get over losing her like that. And anyone else just won't be able to deal with us. A lot of it would be my issues, but I don't think any potential girlfriend would like knowing she's never going to be as important to me as you and Dave are, and at least you two have each other."

He's intensely grateful that he still has things left to plan and organize and plot out as a way to deal with everything. Santana doesn't have anything left to kill or inflict violence on, and her fallback coping method – making sure that Kurt is okay – doesn't measure up to shooting things. If Kurt were in her shoes, he's sure he'd be driving himself insane thinking about all of the "what ifs" that could be awaiting them.

"You have us, too," he says. "And as for the rest, we're not even done with high school yet. We don't have to make decisions about anything beyond what to eat for our next meal for a while."

"I keep forgetting that," she says. "That we're not adults, I mean."

"So do I," Kurt says. "Believe me, so do I."

"I want you to make me a promise," she says. "No, two promises."

"Only if I get to extract a promise from you in return," he says.

Santana snuggles back into his chest. "Deal. First, promise me that no matter what it's like on the other side, we don't do anything without each other."

"I promise," he tells her. "And do you promise to accept that I want to be stuck with you, and that Dave does, too?"

"Okay," she says. "And the other one…"

"Yes?" he asks when she doesn't continue.

"If it's safe, and there's still a functioning modern society over there," she says, "Promise me that you'll go with me to see a shrink."

"Santana," Kurt protests.

"Promise me," she says stubbornly. "It's not just for you, you know. We're both going to need one. Okay?"

"Fine," he says, and he pulls her closer. "I promise."

And he hates making that sort of promise, hates that Santana knows just how damaged he is, hates that it's necessary – but when it comes down to a choice between hating the promises he makes and making Santana feel worried or bad or upset, he'll go with making the promise. After all, it's better to see a shrink and make Santana happy than to find out that there are no shrinks to speak of in Europe, or North Africa, or wherever they end up.

"I promise," he says for a third time.

"Of course you do," she says with an air of satisfaction. "You'd be an idiot to not listen to me."

Santana takes their joined hands and presses them hard against her lower abdomen for a second. "God damn," she says. "Fucking ache won't go away."

"Hunger pangs?" Kurt asks sympathetically. "I know we're eating three times a day, but our caloric output exceeds our intake by a lot."

"Yeah," she says, then shakes her head. "No. I mean I'm hungry, but it's not –"

She presses their hands against her abdomen again, and goes rigid as a board against his chest. "Fuck!" She bolts from her seat and rushes downstairs. The split second glimpse of her horrified face is all it takes to make Kurt follow behind as fast as he can.

He gets below deck just in time to see her pull the door of the tiny bathroom shut behind her – quietly, so as not to wake Dave, but with a quick, hard jerk of the handle that speaks volumes of how much she wanted to slam it closed. He hurries over and knocks lightly on the door. "Santana?"

There's a note of panic threading through her voice when she replies. "Tell me that we remembered to pick up some fucking tampons when we were ransacking those stores."

He does a rapid mental inventory of all the supplies on the boat and comes up empty. "Oh, god. I'm so sorry," he says, stricken with guilt. How stupid could he be? "I should have remembered. How could I have forgotten something so important?"

"Kurt," she says, "Shut up. It's not your fault you forgot I get periods. It's not like I expect you to spend a whole lot of time thinking about girls' bodies. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine. I remembered to get fucking substitute shower supplies, for Chrissake! I'll just have to gut through it somehow."

Kurt swallows the urge to apologize again. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Santana sighs heavily and says, "You know that ugly purple shirt that doesn't fit any of us? The one with the bleach stain?"

"Do you want me to get it?" he asks.

"And scissors," she says. "Safety pins would be great too, if we have them."

"We do," he says with relief. "They're in the first aid kit."

"Then go get them," Santana snaps. She immediately softens her voice and adds, "Please."

Kurt nods despite knowing that she wouldn't see the motion. "I'll be right back."

The shirt is easy enough to retrieve. By unspoken agreement, they'd designated it a last resort shirt and shoved it into the bottom left corner of the tiny closet by the bed. Kurt balls it up and tosses it across the cabin to the bathroom door and sets about the more difficult task of retrieving the first aid kit. Due to lack of room, they'd ended up sticking it in one of the cubbyholes at the head of the berth. He slips onto the mattress as gently as possible and slowly knee-walks to the cubbyhole in question, grateful that Dave is still in the habit of sleeping on the right side of the bed.

Dave stirs when Kurt reaches his pillow, and at the quiet scrape of the bottom of the kit against the cubbyhole as Kurt pulls it out and onto the bed, he turns and opens his eyes. "K'rt?" he says sleepily. "M' turn?"

"No," Kurt says softly. "We'll wake you in an hour. Santana just needs a few things from the kit."

At that Dave sits upright, knuckling the sleep from his eyes. "What for?" he asks, sounding miles more awake than he had a moment ago. "Is she okay?"

"She's not injured," Kurt tells him. "But we forgot to get certain feminine hygiene products for her when we were still on land, and now…. Well. You get the picture."

Dave winces. "Man. That sucks."

"No argument here." Kurt flips the lid open and pulls the trays out. He finds the bandage scissors under a small pile of sterile gauze pads. The safety pins he likes to use to hold Ace bandages in place are still in the top tray, and he grabs all of them. He pokes through the second tray briefly, and palms a small pack of Advil as well.

"Go back to sleep," he says as he closes the kit and shoves it back in the cubbyhole. "We need all the sleep we can get."

"Nah," Dave says, shaking his head. "I'm wide awake now. Santana can crash early."

"I'm sure she'll appreciate it," Kurt says, and he gives Dave a small smile before crawling off the bed with Santana's supplies.

He picks up the shirt from the floor and knocks on the door again. "I have it all," he says.

She opens the door a crack, just wide enough to let him hand the bundle over. "Thanks," she mutters, her cheeks scarlet.

"Dave's up," he says before she can shut the door again. "The bed's all yours once you're out. Just take the Advil and sleep your cramps off, okay?"

"Okay." She fixes him with a sharp look, still furiously blushing. "We're never going to speak of this again. Ever."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he says, and pulls the door shut for her. "Good night, Santana."

"Good night," she says from behind the door.

Kurt turns back to the berth, where Dave is sitting and lacing up his shoes, already dressed in his McKinley Titans shirt and one of the campers' stiff, heavy denim jeans. Dave tugs on the thick wool sweater he's taken to wearing and stands up. "Guess that makes it good morning for me," he says.

"I guess it does," Kurt says. "Coffee?"

"No better way to start my morning," Dave says. "Meet you topside in a few – I'll bring you something to eat, too."

Once again Kurt feels compelled to smile. He wishes it hadn't taken such a horrific disaster to get Dave to drop his homophobic asshole mask, but even so, the boy behind it is easy to get along with. It's far better than being stuck with the Dave Karofsky he'd expected to have as a companion on his wild, desperate journey into the unknown. "That sounds good to me."

Dave makes a shooing motion, smiling back. "Go turn the lantern on," he says. "It's going to get dark soon."

"I'm going," Kurt says. He tramps up the stairs, zipping his heavy coat all the way up to beneath his chin as he ascends to the deck.

He knows exactly what Dave will bring him for his lunch: a hot cup of tea made from the battered box of Earl Grey they'd found in the galley on the second day, a carrot cake Clif bar, and a third of a can of peaches packed in light syrup. Dave will bring this because he always does, because he knows that Kurt wants to be warm but doesn't want too much caffeine, because the carrot cake bars are his favorites, and because of all the canned fruit, the peaches taste the best.

He knows all of this. He just doesn't know why Dave would care so much about making him happy.

Still, there are peaches to look forward to, and he plans on enjoying them while he can.

**

"Tell me again," Kurt says, his face tilted up to the night sky as he leans back against the railing. "Which constellations are we looking at?"

Dave takes in the view of the stars above. Just like it has for the past twelve nights, it makes him feel tiny, even more than the surrounding ocean does. Back in Lima there was too much light pollution to see a whole lot of stars other than the major constellations, and when they were on the road they were too busy trying to survive to stargaze. But out here on the water, far from shore, it's big and overwhelming, and they don't matter even just the littlest bit in the grand scheme of things. Every night starts off the same. First it all looks black for a second. Then the brightest stars – Polaris, Arcturus, Antares, Deneb, Vega – and their constellations materialize. Then he blinks, and the whole sky is filled with stars as far as he can see, big and small and mere specks, more stars than black space between them, all of them glittering. He can't even begin to guess how many stars he's looking at.

"Tell me which ones you remember, and I'll fill in the rest," he says instead of boring Kurt with what's in his head. It would all come out clumsily, anyway, and Dave doesn't want Kurt to think he's dumb anymore.

Kurt lifts his arm above his head to point. "That's Ursa Major," he says. "And that's the Northern Cross. Cygnus, right?" Dave nods, and he continues. "There's Hercules over there," he says, pointing more toward the east. He points up again. "And up there's Virgo – your sign."

"Not bad," Dave says, unaccountably pleased that Kurt knows his birthday. "Okay, so see over near Ursa Major? Below and to the left is Leo." He traces the outline with a fingertip, lining his hand up with Kurt's line of sight. "There's the triangle head, and the body goes straight down in a line, and the tail curves off to the right. See it?"

"I see it," Kurt says. "Show me another?"

"Sure." Dave thinks a moment and points above the horizon to the north. "See that big loop of stars surrounding Ursa Minor? That's Draco's tail. The neck goes straight off up and to the right, and the head's that boxy kind of thing at the end. And down there right above the water are Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Cepheus is the pentagon with little legs coming off the top and bottom on the right side, and Cassiopeia's the squished looking W."

"There's a story behind Cassiopeia, isn't there?" Kurt asks. "I recognize the name. The honors English teacher our freshman year was big on Greek mythology."

"Yeah," Dave says. "It's in that story of Perseus, the guy who killed Medusa. She was a queen, and Cepheus was her husband, and she was so stuck up about her looks that she claimed she was better looking than Poseidon's daughters. To punish her, Poseidon had her daughter Andromeda tied to a rock in the sea where a sea monster would kill her and eat her. Perseus, who'd just killed Medusa in his last story, found out what was going on and struck a deal with the king and queen: if he killed the monster and saved their daughter, they had to let him marry her."

"My, how enlightened and forward thinking," Kurt interjects sarcastically.

Dave laughs a little. "Uh-huh. So anyway, he did, and they were about to get married when some other guy who Andromeda was supposed to marry before Perseus killed the monster showed up. The king and queen sided with the other guy, and Perseus turned them all into stone with Medusa's head, which he was carrying around in a bag with him. He and Andromeda went off together, Cepheus and Cassiopeia died and got turned into constellations," Dave says. "But to punish the queen for thinking she was better looking than the gods, her throne gets turned upside down six months out of the year."

"The ancient Greeks were certainly imaginative," Kurt says. "But what I want to know is how you know all of this. It seems unlike you."

"I had a cool troop leader when I was a Boy Scout," Dave says, shrugging uncomfortably. "He taught us the stories behind the constellations when we went on camping trips. It was pretty fun while it lasted."

"That's right," Kurt says. "I'd forgotten you were in the Boy Scouts."

"That's me," Dave says, "Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, et cetera." He feels his ears heat in embarrassment. "Maybe not so much."

"Don't," Kurt tells him firmly. "I don't care about it anymore. It doesn't matter. Not now. Got it?" He waits for Dave to nod and continues. "So why did you quit the Boy Scouts if you liked it so much?"

"Got a crush on a guy in my troop in seventh grade, freaked out, quit the week after." He holds his hands against the lantern for a second to warm them up and rubs them together briskly. "There's – there was, I mean – only a policy on gay adults not being allowed to work with the Scouts – actually, they said 'avowed homosexuals', if you can believe that. But just because there wasn't anything official about gay scouts didn't mean it wouldn't be a huge problem. Between the Boy Scouts and hockey, I was kind of screwed. Nobody wants to be the first at anything when they're thirteen, especially when it could end up being so bad."

"I remember that," Kurt says. "My parents wanted me to be a Cub Scout when I was in first grade. It all went over my head at the time, but apparently the local director expressed concern that I wasn't 'Cub Scout material.' Given how pissed off Dad was that whole week after, I'm pretty sure he meant that I looked gayer than a rainbow." His voice wobbles slightly when he mentions his dad, but his eyes stay dry.

Dave wants to reach across the table and take his hand to comfort him, but that's not how they do things. There's trust, and acceptance, and even friendship, but they don't have the same easy physical affection that Santana has with them. Maybe they'd have that if Dave pushed through Kurt's barriers like Santana did, but he wants Kurt to be comfortable enough to reach out first. So he pretends he didn't hear the wobble and says, "Yeah. It wasn't ever said out loud, but I figured the Scout Law ended with 'thrifty, brave, clean, reverent, and _straight_.' Kind of wish I'd had the balls to stick it out. I wanted to be an Eagle Scout, you know. It looks awesome on college applications." He frowns. "Would have looked awesome."

"We'll manage something," Kurt says bracingly. "I'm sure we'll be able to test into whatever the high school equivalent is wherever we end up and finish school like we ought to. We're smart enough to graduate with good grades, and it's not like they can order your transcripts to see what your GPA was the past two years. They'll probably make an exception if we do a good enough job for our final year."

"Do you really believe all that?" Dave asks. "Or are you just saying it?"

"I want to believe it," Kurt says. "It's better than thinking we're just going to be another three anonymous faces in a huge crowd of refugees."

Dave's brain filled in the unspoken words. That, or worse. "We have to get there first before we find out if we get a happily ever after," he says.

"Speaking of getting there," Kurt says, his brows drawn together above troubled eyes, "Have you looked in the cabinets recently? I don't mean to get food. Have you really looked?"

"Yeah," he says. "We're still doing good for now, but –"

"I counted," Kurt says bluntly. "We have enough for one person to eat three inadequate meals a day for two, maybe two and a half months. One person. And we need to stretch that out for three people, for what's possibly going to be another seventy-plus days."

Dave drops his head into his hands. "Shit. We're barely getting twelve hundred calories a day as it is. How the hell are we going to do this?"

"Two meals a day," Kurt says. "And we only have one item per meal, unless we're cracking open one of the cans of vegetables, since they're so low in calories. No more energy bar plus soup, or tuna plus vegetables. We have the bottled water and the freshwater maker, so we drink as much as we can to prevent dehydration. And we're all going to have to start adding extra creamer and sugar to the coffee to get extra calories."

"Fuck," Dave groans. He rubs his forehead and sits upright. "Four hundred, maybe five hundred calories a day? Jesus fucking Christ. We'll be lucky if we don't collapse of exhaustion before we get halfway there."

"We'll have to start drinking more coffee to stay alert," Kurt says. "And we'll just have to hope that it doesn't make our hearts give out."

Dave sags in his seat, his imagination already providing him with the nightmare that lay ahead. "I can't believe this."

Kurt reaches across the table and grabs his hand. "We're going to make it," he says, staring into Dave's eyes with fierce conviction as he squeezes his hand uncomfortably hard. " _We're going to make it_."

Dave looks down at his hand. Was this what it took to make Kurt reach out? Not to comfort himself, but to comfort Dave? "I believe you," he says, and it's only partly a lie.

There's one more hard squeeze to his hand, and then Kurt lets go and sits back. "I want a giant kitchen," he says abruptly, "With state of the art appliances and an island in the middle that's big enough to do prep work for three different meals at once. And a walk in pantry with shelves a foot deep on all sides from floor to ceiling."

"I really like the sound of that," Dave says. "And a big garden out back, with trees and flowers and vegetables, with a covered porch we can all sit out on at night to look at the stars and relax."

"Vegetables and fruits," Kurt adds. "We can hang lanterns in the trees to light it up at night."

"A decent sized lawn in front, and one of those cool looking wrought iron fences," Dave says. "And a big car, as big as the last one."

Kurt goes silent, and Dave is about to change the subject when he finally speaks up again. "Santana wants three bedrooms," he says. "I want at least six. Just in case."

It's an impossible hope, and it won't ever happen. They'll never see them again, and Kurt knows it, just like Dave does. But –

"Yeah," he says. "Just in case."

Kurt gives him a tiny nod – in gratitude, Dave thinks – and stares up at the sky again. "So what's the story behind Draco?"

"Well," Dave says, settling back against the rail to join him in stargazing, "To explain Draco, I should probably start with Hercules. That's a pretty long one, though. Want to hear it?"

"It's not like we don't have the time," Kurt says, and he settles his arm on the table beside Dave's as he turns to lean against the rail himself. The sides of their hands brush up against each other lightly, barely touching.

Dave waits for Kurt to pull away, and when he doesn't, he starts in on the story. "So, unlike the Disney version of the story, where Hercules is the son of Zeus and Hera, all the Greek legends pretty much agree that Zeus was a cheating bastard who had dozens of kids with different women all over the place. Hercules was the son of Zeus and Alcmena, Perseus' granddaughter – the one who killed Medusa and saved Andromeda. But what's really fucked up about it is that Perseus was Zeus' son, which means that Zeus knocked up his own great-granddaughter."

"Ugh."

"Yeah, Greek legends are all kinds of wrong," Dave agrees. "Anyway…" He trails off as Kurt slips his hand into his.

"Anyway?" Kurt prompts.

"Anyway, Zeus announced to all the other gods that he was going to have a son who would rule over all of them someday. Hera knew about Alcmena, so she sent another goddess to make sure she never delivered the baby so that a different son would be born first, but her plan didn't work and Hercules was born anyway. Athena took him to Hera immediately after, and since Hera didn't recognize him, she nursed him, and Hercules got godlike powers because of it." Dave pauses and looks over at Kurt to see if he's boring him yet.

Kurt smiles slightly. "I'm listening."

"Right." Dave goes back to stargazing and continues the story. "There's not a whole lot in between him being a baby and him starting in on the Twelve Labors of Hercules, other than Hera trying to kill him all the time. But the Twelve Labors were her fault, too. She tricked Hercules into serving a king for ten years, and doing whatever the king wanted him to do, even if it was impossible. And the things he had to do always seemed totally hopeless, but he did them anyway. So, the first Labor of Hercules was to kill the Nemean Lion. No one had ever even come close, since its fur protected it from human weapons and its claws were sharper than any sword ever made."

He talks himself hoarse for much of the night, eyes on the stars and hand tucked tentatively in Kurt's, doing his best to distract himself with his voice as much as he's attempting to distract Kurt. He dreads the slow starvation that lies ahead, the creeping tiredness, the hopelessness that will inevitably replace their determination to survive.

But tonight, he has stars, and he has Kurt's trust, and he has a boat traveling at about eighty knots a day. And that will have to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joyful, you lovely, brilliant person. A thousand thanks to you for providing the impetus to finish this chapter.


	6. Days Seventy-Two, Seventy-Four, and Seventy-Five

Day 72

Kurt sits slumped over at the table on deck, one hand clutching his oversized coat around his shoulders and the other wrapped around a cup of coffee made from one of the very last scoops of Folgers. The late morning light is too bright for his tired eyes, and he lets his eyelids slide shut until he’s looking out at the world through tiny slits. Santana stands at the tiller, using it to keep herself upright as much as to steer the boat, and Dave trims the sails with weary hands, arms trembling from the effort to keep them above his head for any length of time.

By all rights Kurt should still be asleep. He should have still been asleep hours ago. But he’s glad that Santana had shaken him awake at eight to tell him they’d spotted seagulls, a spark in her eyes and a smile on her too-thin face for the first time in weeks.

Seagulls mean land. Land means it could be over today. Land means they might have food, and real beds, and people who might care about their health and safety.

Land might mean the death of their dreams, and their own deaths as well.

“Are you sure I can’t –” He breaks off, coughing harshly. When the spell has passed, he continues in a hoarse voice, barely louder than a whisper. “Are you sure I can’t help?”

“Stop asking,” Santana says. “Just sit there and keep an eye out for other boats.”

He feels like protesting. Logically, though, he knows they’re right to keep him seated and comfortable, and it’s his own fault. He’d realized a few weeks into their new rationing plan that the only way to stretch out the food long enough to hit dry land would be if they cut back even further, but three of them on starvation rations even more severe than they were already on would kill them all. Two of them had to be able to function as well as possible, and he wasn’t about to ask one of them to halve their already miniscule meals.

Santana and Dave hadn’t caught on until almost three weeks ago when Kurt came down with a bad cough that wouldn’t let up, and they insisted he take his shirt off so they could listen to his lungs as best they could without a stethoscope. He told them it was the only practical option. Santana called him a self-sacrificing idiot and forced him to eat an entire can of soup.

The dark smudge on the horizon grows bigger, and Kurt sets his coffee cup down to shade his eyes and scans the water for boats. They should have seen sails by now if there was still life out there. Shouldn’t they have seen sails? It could be that the land ahead isn’t used as a port or a bay, and nobody sails out of there. But after all they’ve been through, after how far they’ve gotten, the dread that the worst case scenario is the only outcome is taking hold of his brain and not letting go.

“I think I see something,” Dave says. He ties off the sail and goes to the rail across the deck from Kurt, leaning over to peer out across the water. “I think – Santana, are you seeing this?”

She lets go of the tiller and joins him at the rail. “No way,” she breathes. “No way.”

“What is it?” Kurt asks. He stands slowly upright and makes his way over on unsteady feet.

Dave reaches out to steady him as soon as he’s within arm’s reach. “I could be wrong,” he says, voice shaking, “But I think that’s a fishing trawler out there.”

“Let’s get a closer look,” Kurt says, coughing hard into his fist. He’s terrified of hoping. It could be abandoned. The crew could be dead. The crew could all be zombies. But they need to see – they need to be certain.

Santana takes over supporting Kurt and leads him back to the table. “You got it, fearless leader,” she says affectionately as she settles him back in his seat. She and Dave take their places again, and they point the prow toward the far-off trawler.

The choppy waves pushing against the hull bounce them up and down, and Dave struggles to adjust the sails as they steer headfirst into the oncoming wind. Still, Santana holds the tiller steady, and the sails, freshly trimmed, catch the wind at just enough of an angle to send them forward at a slow but undeniable pace.

Little white triangles that look like whitecaps appear off in the distance. Kurt squints against the sun glinting off the waves and braces himself on the rail as a shiver of nervous excitement runs down his spine. “I see sails,” he calls out croakily. “Lots of sails.”

“Oh my god,” Santana says. Kurt sees her knees go weak at the sight. “We made it. We fucking made it.”

They sail in tense, anticipatory silence for several minutes, Kurt gripping his half full cup so tightly his knuckles turn white. Then, as they draw nearer, sound reaches them, bouncing off the water and into their ears – the low thrum of engines, the shouts from one fisherman to another, the scrape of a full net being hauled up the side of the boat.

People. Real, honest to god, living, breathing people. They really have made it. Kurt sets his cup down with great care as every muscle in his body goes limp with relief. “We did it,” he whispers to himself. He lets go of the coat, and it falls to the deck at his feet, leaving him in Dave’s oversized McKinley Titans shirt.

They’re close enough for the fishermen to see them now, and one of them waves and cups his hands around his mouth to call out to them. “Aves-vous besoin d’aide?”

Kurt’s mind goes blank for a moment, unused to hearing a foreign language after so long. Then three years of classes and intense extracurricular study kick in. “It’s France,” he says incredulously, and holds his hand to his ribs as another coughing fit wracks his body. “We’re in France.”

Dave leaves off tending the sails and rushes to the portside rails to wave back frantically. “Help! Aidez-nous!”

The fishermen spring into action, and less than a minute later the engine lets out another low rumble as the trawler turns toward their boat and approaches at nearly twice their sailing speed. They pull up to the Don Quixote carefully, port side snug against port side, and one of the men, a lanky, sunburned sailor in a red cap, tosses a sturdy rope across to Dave to secure their boats together. Two more men jump across onto the sailboat’s deck to lend a hand. The younger one, who doesn’t look like he could be more than a few years older than they are, stops and stares as soon as his boots hit the teak planks.

“My god,” he blurts out in French, eyes wide with shock. “What happened to you?”

Kurt has avoided looking in the mirror for over a month, and he’s too used to seeing Dave and Santana looking haggard and tired to be disturbed by their appearances anymore. But he can suddenly see himself, and Dave and Santana, as they must look to their rescuers. Santana is rail thin, cheekbones sharp over hollow cheeks, eyes dull, tee shirt flapping around her body and jeans held up by a tightly tied length of twine from the toolbox. Dave, big and strong and solid at the start of their journey, looks so wrong with no extra flesh on his solid frame, dark circles under his sunken eyes, thin arms punctuated by bony wrists and elbows. And Kurt – Kurt knows how he looks. Gaunt, skeletal even, hands and knees trembling every few seconds from the chill he can’t fend off now that he can’t regulate his body temperature anymore.

“The United States happened,” Kurt croaks, and every fisherman within hearing range freezes.

“You’re from the United States?” the older of the two men who boarded their boat asks, stunned. “You were out on the ocean when it happened?”

Dave shakes his head. “We were in Ohio,” he says. “Up north.”

The younger man draws back warily, but the man with the red cap jumps across with a blanket and a jug of water. “You’re safe now,” he says, passing the jug over to Dave. He shakes out the blanket and walks over to Kurt.

“Thank you,” Kurt tells him, trying to stifle a cough. He stands and takes a step away from the table, legs wobbling underneath him. Darkness creeps into the edges of his vision until all he can see is the face of the fisherman in the red cap, frowning with concern. Then the deck tips crazily beneath his feet, and even the fisherman’s face disappears.

“Get them on board!” he hears someone shout from a great distance away. “They need a hospital!”

It all goes peacefully, blissfully black.

***

The first thing he hears when he begins to wake is the sound of quiet, steady beeping. The next thing that registers is a vague discomfort in the crook of his elbow. Then it’s the smell of the air around him. Rather, it’s the lack of smell. This air is clean, fresh, sterile – their cabin smells stuffy and sick, like the cramped bedroom of an invalid who never opens any windows. He opens his eyes and turns his head to the left.

In the next bed over, Dave sits propped up with a tray across his lap, eating what looks like unseasoned rice and mixed vegetables, a thick beige-white shake on the corner closest to Kurt. He’s dressed in a light blue hospital gown and has an IV snaking into his arm, and it slowly drips yellow fluid into his vein. Kurt coughs.

Dave looks over and smiles, his shoulders sagging with relief. “Hey,” he says quietly.

“Hey,” Kurt says in response, at a loss for better words. His voice is as hoarse and raspy as it was when he collapsed on the boat. “Where are we?”

“We’re at the Centre Hospitalier de la Rochelle,” Dave says. “Hôpital Marius Lacroix.”

“That’s where we are? La Rochelle?”

Dave nods. “We stumbled across their port. Dumb luck. It doesn’t seem real.”

“We can’t be having the same hallucination,” Kurt says, fingering the collar of an identical gown that someone seems to have dressed him in while he was sleeping. He looks up above his bed and sees the same yellow IV bag that’s attached to Dave’s arm. “My hallucination would be more satisfying than waking up in a hospital.” Everything about this seems so normal it’s surreal, and he feels oddly detached from the whole thing, as if his emotions are hidden behind a bank of fog somewhere.

“Yeah.” Dave drinks from the shake, and when he sets it back down Kurt’s lips twitch in a small, involuntary smile at the little dab of liquid that stays behind on his hairy upper lip. “Definitely wouldn’t have been about a bunch of guys on a boat that smells like fish radioing the dock to get an ambulance to meet us.”

“Is that all I missed?” Kurt asks. “And where’s Santana?” He cranes his neck to see around to Dave’s other side, but the only other bed in the room is empty.

“She’s in a different room,” Dave tells him. “They don’t stick guys and girls together.” He looks uneasy. “We’re trying to talk them around and get them to bend the rules for us.”

“I don’t like her not being here,” Kurt says. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“Yeah,” Dave says again. “So they rushed us here, and when the doctors heard the story from the guys who picked us up, they turned around and called the US Embassy in Paris and told _them_ the story, and I don’t know what all the people at the Embassy said, but we ended up with a private room, so I figure it’s a big deal one way or another.” He points to the door and adds, “There’s a guard on the door. Not sure if he’s there to keep people out or to keep us in.”

“I can’t believe there’s still a US Embassy anywhere,” Kurt says. “That’s reassuring.”

Dave spoons up more rice and takes a bite. “Uh-huh. We’ll probably find out more later. Doesn’t really matter right now, though.”

It’s an unsatisfying answer, but Kurt has to admit that Dave is right. The current political situation is a distant second to their health as far as priorities are concerned.

The door opens, and the heavyset guard Dave mentioned steps inside to hold it for a plump, pink-cheeked nurse pushing a wheelchair with a very grumpy Santana seated in it. “That’s right,” she says crabbily, clutching the IV pole rolling along at her side. “I don’t care how nice my room is. Give it to someone else and stick me in here or we’re fucking leaving.”

The guard’s pale blond eyebrows rise at the unconvincing threat – more likely at the coarse language – and Kurt wonders for a moment if they’ll have to be careful what they say around him since he apparently speaks English. The nurse, however, just helps Santana into the far bed with a look of long-suffering patience and makes to draw the curtains separating hers from theirs closed.

“Now why the hell are you doing that?” Santana asks.

The nurse looks to the guard for a translation, and he says tactfully in a heavy accent, “She wants to know why you are closing the curtain.”

“We need to be able to provide you with privacy in here,” the nurse says, turning back to Santana. “We may have made an exception for the three of you, but there is still a policy in place to keep patients from having…inappropriate sexual encounters.”

“One of you guys translate that for me,” Santana says, looking over at Dave and Kurt.

“Blah blah privacy rules, blah blah something else I’m not sure I got. Kurt?”

“Blah blah patients screwing each other,” Kurt adds.

“Fuck your privacy rules,” Santana tells the nurse. “If I don’t keep an eye on them, one of them’s going to go do something stupid while I’m not looking. Quit with the bullshit attempt to protect my maidenly virtue, open the goddamn curtain, and move my bed over to my boys where it belongs.”

The guard stifles a laugh and translates without prompting, again leaving out the worst of it. “She very insists you move the bed close and take the curtains away. I don’t think there will be a problem.”

“They don’t look like they’re up to causing trouble, at least,” the nurse says to the guard, shaking her head. She pulls back the curtains and wheels Santana’s bed a few feet closer.

“Finally,” Santana mutters.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes with your dinners,” she tells Kurt and Santana.

“More tasty toast and rice,” Santana says once Dave translates for her. “Mm, delicious.”

The nurse doesn’t bother asking for a translation, and when the door closes behind her the guard grins and says, “Don’t give Nurse Beauclerc a problem, please. She just does her job. She’s very nice.”

“Yeah, Santana,” Dave says. “Be nice to the nice nurse.”

Kurt can’t see Santana’s face from where he’s lying, but he knows her well enough to be certain she’s just rolled her eyes. “I’ll start being nice when they all stop trying to put us in different rooms. If I wake up tomorrow and I’m back in that other room, all bets are off.”

“Agreed,” Kurt says.

There’s a knock on the door, and the guard opens the door to let a short, balding man with a Middle Eastern look about him inside, one hand tucked into the pocket of his medical coat and the other carrying a clipboard. “Good evening,” he greets them in a refined English accent. He walks to Kurt’s bedside. “Miss Lopez and Mister Karofsky have already met me, but as this is the first time I’ve seen you conscious, let me introduce myself. I’m Doctor Sahin, and I’ll be taking care of the three of you for the duration of your say.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Kurt says, coughing.

Dr. Sahin frowns. “There are a number of things we must discuss about your health,” he says, and turns back to the guard. “Mathieu?”

Mathieu nods and slips out the door, leaving them alone with the doctor.

“I’m sure you’re all very aware of how incredibly lucky you are to be alive,” he says, looking around at the three of them seriously. “Another few weeks and you likely would have died out there.”

None of them say anything. Of course they know. They probably know this even better than the doctor does.

Dr. Sahin seems to sense that no response is forthcoming and moves on. “It’s crucial to get your weight back up to a healthy enough point that we can discharge you,” he says. “The trick is doing so safely. Your stomachs are too small for full meals at the moment, and your digestive systems can’t handle rich foods, which are usually the most energy dense. Your meals are specifically designed to not irritate your stomachs, and we’ll slowly increase them in size until you’re capable of ingesting regular sized portions.” He gestures to the yellow bags of IV fluid and says, “We’ll unhook you from these in a few hours once your electrolytes are closer to normal range and replace them with a TPN solution for a few days to supplement the meals we’re giving you.”

That all sounded simple enough, and very reasonable. “Is there anything else?” Kurt asks. The words scrape his already tender throat.

“No.” Dr. Sahin fetches a light from a wheeled cart nearby and returns to Kurt’s side. “Open your mouth, please.”

Kurt opens up obediently, and Dr. Sahin shines the light at the back of Kurt’s throat, peering in carefully. “I’m afraid that this is medical advice that provides you no help at all after the fact, but as soon as this cough started to affect your voice you should have stopped talking until it went away. At the very least you shouldn’t have spoken above a whisper.” He removes the light and allows Kurt to close his mouth again.

“So what does that mean for me?” Kurt asks, careful to whisper this time.

“It’s not a significant amount of damage, and it’s certainly not the worst I’ve seen,” Dr. Sahin says, “But your vocal cords _are_ damaged. They aren’t meant to take an extended amount of abuse, and they’ve been through too much the past few weeks. It’s entirely possible that they’ll recover fully in time, but for now all that can really be done is for you to rest your voice and hope for the best.”

The fog bank lifts, and emotion returns in a painful rush. Kurt can’t trust himself to speak, so he limits himself to a tight nod, keeping his jaw locked to hold in his despair at the doctor’s words. He can hear in his mind with startling clarity every soaring, pitch-perfect note he’s ever sung on stage, and he has to squeeze his eyes shut to keep in the tears that threaten to fall.

It’s such a stupid thing to get upset over. They’re alive, all three of them. None of them are seriously hurt or injured. There’s still a world free of zombies. And of all the things and people they’ve lost, his singing voice has to be the most trivial. It shouldn’t matter whether or not he can hit a few high notes.

“On the positive side, your blood tests came back negative when we ran them against the infected sample in the lab, so you’re not under quarantine,” Dr. Sahin says, oblivious to Kurt’s reaction.

Dave and Santana speak at the same time.

“Where’d you get zombie blood?”

“So what’s the guard for?”

“We extracted it from an infected passenger on an inbound plane from Los Angeles that we quarantined at Charles De Gaulle Airport. Every hospital in France has a sample now, as do hospitals in most other countries that avoided the outbreak.” Dr. Sahin makes a note on the chart hanging from the foot of Kurt’s bed and adds, “Mathieu is here to prevent unauthorized personnel and visitors from entering your room. The news of your arrival and the story behind it couldn’t be contained. It’s an understatement to say that you’re the subjects of overwhelming curiosity.”

The door opens again, and Nurse Beauclerc enters, pushing a cart with two trays of food and drink on it ahead of her. “Dinner!” she says cheerfully, pressing a button at the end of an electric cord running down from Santana’s bed. When Santana is upright, she pulls up the table tucked away at the side of the bed and sets it across the armrests. Dr. Sahin does the same for Kurt.

“Enjoy your meal,” he says, tipping them a courteous nod. “I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow morning.” He leaves them with Nurse Beauclerc, who hands off the dinner trays to Kurt and Santana and takes her leave with another friendly smile.

“You have to teach me French,” Santana says. She stabs her fork into the mixed vegetables until the tines are overloaded with carrots and string beans and shoves it in her mouth. “I have communication issues.”

“You just want to not be nice to the nice nurse in her own language,” Dave says.

“I never said I didn’t.”

Kurt just stirs his bowl of chicken broth and rice and stares absently at the bony fingers gripping his spoon.

They’re safe. They’re safe.

He’ll never sing again.

But they’re safe.

 

Day 74

 

As Nurse Beauclerc disappears around the corner with their empty breakfast trays, Mathieu enters the room to hold the door open for someone, the overhead light shining off his white-blond hair as he ducks his head deferentially.

“Your Excellency,” he says.

A slim Asian woman in a sharply tailored cream suit and black heels, hair twisted in an elegant bun, acknowledges him with a smile. A fit, bespectacled redheaded man carrying a large briefcase follows close behind. Bringing up the rear is a middle aged brunette woman in business casual, her fingernails flashing bright pink against her light tan.

Santana sits up straighter. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Dave and Kurt, freshly shaved as of yesterday, doing the same. This is something new. Who knows if it’s a good thing or not, but it’s new.

“Thank you, Mathieu,” the first woman says in English. She has an American accent – maybe from New York City or someplace close by. “That will be all for now.”

Mathieu takes his leave quietly, and the redhead sets down the briefcase to drag over two armchairs from against the wall. He situates them in the middle of the room facing their beds, and once he and the American woman have taken a seat, she brushes a nonexistent wrinkle from her skirt and says, “You three have caused quite a stir, you know.”

Santana clears her throat. “Sorry, but who are you?” She keeps the rudeness out of her voice as best as she can. Something tells her that this isn’t someone she should piss off.

“Perhaps I should have introduced myself first,” she says. “I’m Jennifer Takahashi, Special Envoy for the United States refugees in Europe. This is Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Peters, on loan from the US Armed Forces as military liaison, and this is Paulette Durand, from _Le Monde_.” She pauses and smiles faintly at their surprise. “Yes, we still have representation and respect on the world stage for now. The United Nations is treating our country and others that were devastated by the crisis as governments in exile until everything is more settled.”

“So I guess you’re kind of important,” Dave says. “If you have a fancy title and people calling you ‘Your Excellency.’”

“The address is a holdover from an earlier time,” Ms. Takahashi says. “And the job doesn’t come with a salary. But yes, my position is critical to our people. Which is what brings us here today to see you.”

Kurt speaks up for the first time today in a rough whisper. “I don’t understand why. There are probably millions of other survivors from the US that need help more than we do.”

“Survivors? Hmm. At last count, there are three million, nine hundred nine thousand, eight hundred and sixty of our citizens scattered across the globe in non-infected countries,” Ms. Takahashi tells them. “Hawaii went completely unscathed, which is the only reason that number doesn’t dip below two million. But survivors? People who were there when it happened who escaped and made it to safety? No, there are a grand total of three survivors. You three.”

The number quoted knocks Santana for a loop. At first blush, almost four million people sounds like a huge number. But that’s less than the number of people who lived in New York before the zombies. She shivers. “How many people are left from all the countries that were infected?” she asks.

Colonel Peters pulls a sheet of paper from the briefcase and reads aloud in a flat voice that has a hint of a Texan drawl on the long vowels. “Total combined population of North and South America pre-infection was nine hundred fourteen million, four hundred sixty three thousand. Total combined population of citizens left from the infected countries is eighteen million, five hundred sixty four thousand, four hundred and forty.” He looks over the rims of his glasses at them. “There’s no better word to describe what happened to us than decimation.”

“We were among the luckier nations,” Ms. Takahashi tells them soberly. “Several smaller nations in Central and South America were wiped out entirely. In some cases, the only people left are the ones who work at embassies like our own.”

“That’s less than half a percent,” Dave says, face pale beneath his sunburned cheeks and nose.

“And yet, the number of refugees that the remaining nations have taken in is still too high to be comfortable without a great deal of work,” Ms. Takahashi says. “A great number of hotels and unoccupied offices and apartment buildings in dozens of countries are being converted into semi-permanent living quarters, which are being assigned by need and lottery. There’s a quota system in place; former countries with the greatest number of refugees get more spaces on the wait list. Military bases are providing housing to the citizens of their former countries – soldiers and other military personnel are the lowest priority at the moment, since they already have food and shelter.”

“Countries with a lower population density are allowing refugees to apply to transfer to one of the camps there – again, by lottery,” Colonel Peters says. “Refugees with family or business ties to certain countries have the chance to apply for residency if a citizen will sponsor them.”

Kurt shakes his head wearily. “So why _are_ you here? If we’re the last to arrive, then –” He coughs hard, and Dave takes over.

“Then we’re at the bottom of the list. Don’t get us wrong, that’s way better than how it’s been the last two and a half months, but wouldn’t it be easier to just send us off to the nearest camp when we’re cleared to get out of here?”

“Again, that’s why we’re here,” Ms. Takahashi says. “Every nation with a seat on the U.N., regardless of whether there’s still a viable homeland, is in agreement that we follow the terms Colonel Peters and I just outlined for you. That’s the official stance, with no exceptions. However, that was before yesterday’s paper was published.”

Colonel Peters opens up his briefcase again and pulls out a copy of _Le Monde_ , yesterday’s date at the top. “‘A Miracle for the Ages,’” he reads out loud, and turns it around to show them the seventy-two point font headline. “This was on the front page of every newspaper across four continents yesterday. Your names were unknown until last night, when an orderly leaked them online. She was fired this morning, obviously, but the cat’s out of the bag.”

“There weren’t supposed to be any exceptions,” Ms. Takahashi says. “But I can tell you without a doubt that school children will learn about you in their history classes when the next edition of textbooks is published. The three of you are beyond famous. You’re a symbol to everyone who’s found themselves without a country or home to call their own anymore. You have rekindled their hope that their loved ones may have survived as well.”

“Within an hour of the news breaking, there was already an online drive to get people to put money into an account for you so that you wouldn’t find yourselves without resources,” Colonel Peters says. “There’s no government left on the planet that would put restrictions on you applying for residency. As soon as they think you’ll be up to it they’ll be actively trying to get you to choose their country as your new home. Every English speaking country is certain you’ll choose one of them. Poland, Germany, and Spain will likely attempt to appeal to your ancestry as a means of swaying your decision. There are others who view you as a good luck charm and hope that your presence in their country will be a beneficial influence.”

“This can’t be real,” Santana says, head spinning. “We’re still back on the boat. I’m delusional from hunger. This is a hallucination.”

Dave reaches across the space between them and flicks her elbow.

“Ow!”

“It’s real,” he says unhappily.

Kurt looks at Ms. Takahashi intently. “What’s your opinion?” he asks quietly. “What do you think we should do?”

“I’m based out of London,” she tells them, “And they’ve been very efficient at providing necessities to their refugees. Your needs wouldn’t be neglected there. That said, the French government doesn’t just want to keep you. They want to take care of you, and protect your interests. Your health and wellbeing are of great importance to everyone, and the French government can and will gladly provide whatever is necessary to help you regain both.”

“I don’t want to be famous,” Dave says. He looks down at his lap and picks at the little pills on the blanket. “I just want to be left alone.”

“Same here,” Santana says. “Is there an unpopulated island you can drop us off on?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Ms. Takahashi says. “But we can help make your transition back to society as easy as possible.”

“I don’t know,” Dave says doubtfully. “Kurt?”

Kurt sighs and says quietly, wrecked voice hoarse and weary, “I’m tired of being on the move. I want to have a home again. I want to feel safe. I want to feel like even if people have an agenda where we’re concerned, they still respect our privacy – respect us as people. I want it to be over and done with.”

It sounds perfect. It’s everything Santana wanted and more, and Kurt’s right. They’re tired, and it’s past time for this to be over. She knows it comes down to having arrived in France and not somewhere else, and she doesn’t even speak the language, but she’s already finding herself becoming attached to the country that had saved their lives. It was a crew of French fishermen who’d rescued them from their boat, and it’s a team of French nurses and doctors who are giving them medical care in a private room, and it’s the French government who gave them around the clock security to keep them from being disturbed.

Yes, this could be their home if they let it. “I think I want to stay,” she says.

“Promise that we’re not gonna end up being fu – freaking tabloid material if we stay,” Dave says, in a voice that leaves no room for argument.

“For better or for worse, you’re always going to be public figures,” Ms. Takahashi says gently. “But I’m sure that you will not be subjected to the gossip that gets peddled in the tabloids, especially here.”

Dave sits back and nods reluctantly. “I guess we’re staying, then.”

“Good to hear,” Colonel Peters says. He dives back into his briefcase and brings out a manila folder. “We took the liberty of compiling housing options for you here in France under the assumption that you’d likely make the choice to remain here. Now, we have several homes that would allow you to stay out of the apartments, as I doubt that’s a living situation you’d be comfortable with. The first is a small three bedroom home in the Fourteenth Arrondissement in Paris –”

“No!”

The instinctive response bursts from all three of them at once. Santana’s skin crawls at the thought of being surrounded by so many people. Dave’s jaw is clenched so tightly she can see a muscle twitch right at the hinge. Kurt looks like he’s about to throw up. They couldn’t – she can’t imagine ever wanting to set foot in a big city again. People could talk all day long about the history and art and culture, but they don’t see it like Santana and Kurt and Dave do. They don’t see the millions of people who could turn into zombies out of the blue one day. They don’t see what would happen if they were stuck in a city full of the undead and unable to escape to safety.

“Not Paris,” Kurt whispers harshly. “Not – not a city. Never again.”

Comprehension dawns on Colonel Peters’ face. “Ah. Of course. In that case, will you give us a day to come up with a list of houses outside the city? We’ll only look at the smaller towns and communes.”

“It would be safer and more practical if we settled you near Paris, even if you don’t live within its limits,” Ms. Takahashi says. “It will be easier to provide you with the necessary resources to aid in your recovery if you’re closer to the capitol.”

“We can do that,” Santana says. “Just make it someplace small. The town, I mean. It has to be small.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Ms. Takahashi assures her. “Now, there is the matter of the three of you being minors. We understand the situation you’re in, but we can’t simply let you move into an empty house by yourselves without sending an adult with you in some supervisory capacity until one or more of you reach adulthood.”

“I turn eighteen on August thirtieth,” Dave says. “Could you just overlook it?”

“That might seem like a good idea to you at the moment, but you may find that having an adult living with you could be quite helpful.” Ms. Takahashi folds her hands across her knee and straightens her shoulders. “Naturally, we’ll make sure that you meet and approve of whoever we send with you.”

Santana trades unhappy looks with her boys, but they don’t really have a say in it. She has a feeling that they’re all in agreement that the only thing that will influence their decision is whether or not the person is useful rather than nice.

“Moving on,” Ms. Takahashi says. “We will, of course, provide tutors to catch you up with the rest of your academic age group, and French lessons as well should any of you need them. I think that covers it for now, unless there’s anything else you’d like to add.”

“A shrink,” Santana says. “Get us a shrink. Please.” Kurt and Dave nod.

Colonel Peters jots down a note on a page in the folder. “That won’t be a problem. Anything else?”

Kurt hesitates, and says hoarsely, “Are you still looking for survivors?”

“We do flyovers every day,” Colonel Peters says. “On both continents. We have Navy carriers stationed around both coasts of the county, and we don’t plan on calling off the search for the foreseeable future.”

“We have friends,” Kurt says. “They got out of Lima alive, too.”

Santana has a feeling that the list of people they’re looking for already numbers in the tens of millions in the United States alone, but Colonel Peters doesn’t even blink. “What are their names?” he asks, holding his pen at the ready. “Where do you think they went?”

“Rachel and Leroy Berry. Mike Chang. Tina Cohen-Chang. They went to the Bay Area in California.” Kurt stops, voice temporarily spent.

“Noah Puckerman,” Santana continues. “His sister Sarah and his mom Margaret. Lauren Zizes. They said they were going up to Canada. My best guess is they went to someplace rural in southern Ontario.”

“We’ll keep our eyes and ears open,” Colonel Peters promised.

He and Ms. Takahashi stand and approach their beds to shake their hands. They both have a firm handshake, and their palms are dry and warm. It’s a silly thing to be reassured by, but Santana feels somewhat better for it.

“I’m afraid we have to fly back to London,” Ms. Takahashi says. “We have a meeting at five that we can’t miss. But I hope you feel like you’re in good hands.”

“As good as we can,” Dave says, shrugging.

Ms. Takahashi nods and beckons to the journalist – Paulette Durand – who’s been leaning against the wall quietly taking it all in so far. “I’m sure you’ll be reluctant to do so, and it’s perfectly understandable, but I strongly suggest granting Paulette an interview. She won’t sensationalize your story, I promise you, and she’s agreed to not press you on anything you deem off-limits. Right now, you’re larger than life, a mystery. We need to show the people behind your names and get your story out there to prevent any wild speculation from cropping up.”

“If you think we should,” Santana says, and Ms. Takahashi smiles.

“Get some rest, you three. You can relax. It’s over.” And with that parting remark, she and Colonel Peters exit the room, leaving them alone with Paulette.

“I’ll let you start at the beginning,” Paulette says, her accent noticeable but soft. She takes the seat that Ms. Takahashi just vacated and gets out a digital recorder. “Take as much time as you need.”

Santana doesn’t have to look at her boys to know that they’re going to do what she is. Maybe if this journalist seems alright they’ll tell her about the real beginning – not all of it, but some. But for now, the beginning has nothing to do with death.

“For me, it started when Kurt saved me from the zombies outside my house,” Dave says.

“It started when Dave sent our friends a text message that got some of them to safety outside the city,” Kurt rasps.

Santana shakes her head. “It started when our friends had no room for me in their cars, and Kurt and Dave took me with them without a second thought.”

“It sounds like you’re very close,” Paulette says.

This time they do look at each other wordlessly, somehow surprised by the word choice. Close? Close can’t even begin to describe the three of them. Close is just a shadow of the real thing. Nobody could understand, not without going through what they have. Close won’t ever be able to explain what it’s like to have two other people carrying around a part of her soul, or what it’s like to have theirs tied permanently to her heart as well.

“Yeah,” Santana says. “You could say we’re close.”

Day 75

Mathieu brings them a bundle of newspapers when he relieves the overnight guard early in the morning. He opens the door quietly and sticks his head in, and when he sees that they’re all awake he comes inside and hands two thick newspapers over to Dave with a beaming smile. “It is a good morning,” he says. “How beautiful the city is today.”

“Really?” Santana reaches above her head and pulls the cord on the blinds to let in the sunlight. “Hey, the world didn’t end again while we were sleeping.”

“Imagine that,” Kurt says dryly.

“Want to make a bet on how long it lasts?” she asks.

“Not a chance,” Kurt says. “I don’t want to jinx it.”

“Me neither,” Dave says. Maybe he’s just being stupidly superstitious, but he doesn’t want to test their luck.

Santana holds out her hands to Dave and makes a grabbing gesture. “If one of those is in English, fork it over.”

He looks down at the papers on his lap and passes her the one on the top. “I think _The Guardian_ ’s from England. Is it?”

“Yes, it is the English paper. You want this, yes?” Mathieu asks Santana.

“You’re awesome,” Santana says. She holds up the paper so that the light from the window falls on the front page, and her mouth twists as she reads the headline. “This, on the other hand, isn’t.”

She flashes it at Dave, and he chokes in disbelief. “‘Miracles Do Happen: ‘The _Don Quixote_ Three’ share their story with the world.’ Seriously?”

Kurt closes his eyes and lifts his hands to rub small circles against his temples with his fingertips. “They’re calling us ‘the _Don Quixote_ Three.’ Fantastic.”

“I’ll read this later,” Santana says. “I have more important things to do. Like organize my sock drawer.”

“You don’t have a sock drawer,” Dave points out.

“Exactly.”

Dave shakes his head and turns to Mathieu, who’s stopped smiling and started shifting uncomfortably. “Whatever. So there’s something that’s been bugging me. How’d the rest of the world not get affected by whatever it was that made the zombies?”

Mathieu cocks his head curiously. “You were not told?”

“All we’ve heard is stuff about us,” Dave says. “So what was different here?”

“It was all on the internet,” Mathieu says. “On Twitter. One minute, everything is movies and celebrities, the next minute it is only zombies from your continents.”

Kurt lets out a sharp laugh and coughs. There’s no humor behind it. “Twitter saved the world?”

“Yes!” Mathieu says earnestly. “Everyone was thinking it was a joke first, but with everyone making tweets on zombies the governments closed all the ports and stopped the aeroplanes from your continents from putting the passengers off.”

“A mass quarantine,” Kurt murmurs, and Mathieu nods.

“If a ship or aeroplane had no zombies, the passengers could come out. If not –” He shrugs expressively. “We are safe here.”

“For now,” Santana says.

There are too many awful parts to Mathieu’s story for Dave to be able to think about it for more than a few seconds without wanting to throw the nearest breakable object at the wall. If they had no zombies? What if there was only one? Did everyone on board have to die too? Did they even try to save the uninfected people who were stuck on the ships and planes? Did they starve them out first? Did they blow them up? Was it quick?

How many more people could have lived?

“Dave.”

He looks up at Kurt, who’s watching him with a carefully neutral expression. “What?”

“It was the safest option,” Kurt says. “It was the only logical choice.”

“Just because it was the best choice doesn’t make it the right one,” Dave shoots back.

Santana stretches over the rail of her bed and squeezes his wrist, silently telling him to drop it. “Hey Mathieu,” she says. “If we get up to sit in the chairs, do you promise not to tell the nurse?”

“I will not lie,” Mathieu says. “But if she does not ask, it is not a lie.”

“Glad we’re on the same page,” Santana says. She pushes her blanket off her legs and lowers the side rail, dropping to her bare feet beside the bed. “Come on, big guy. Let’s give our fearless leader a different wall to stare at.” Dave followed her lead and slides off his bed, and he and Santana lower the rail on Kurt’s bed and help him up.

Kurt grips his IV pole in one hand and puts his other arm around Santana’s shoulders. “A new view would be great,” he says.

Santana wraps her arm around his waist and leads him over to the armchairs against the far wall. “Your wish, my command, et cetera.” She lets him down gently into the right hand chair, doing her best not to appear to be fussing over him as she moves his IV pole out of the way and looks around for a blanket to throw over his bare legs.

Dave grabs the blanket from his own bed as well as the two newspapers and takes the center seat, placing the blanket over Kurt’s lap without comment. Kurt hates feeling like he needs help – he’d been strong and in control for so long, and Dave could only imagine what it felt like to have his own body betray him like that. Dave refuses to blame Kurt for the predicament his friend is in. His decision had kept them alive long enough to be rescued.

He never would have forgiven Kurt if he’d died, though. Never. It’s bad enough that he’s the last one still on the TPN solution when Dave and Santana had had the IV ports removed the afternoon before. It’s bad enough that Kurt’s voice is unrecognizable. But at least they’re all alive.

“Well,” he says when Santana sits down in the chair on his other side, “We might as well find out what that journalist made from the interview.”

“Let’s get it over with,” Santana says. She steals _The Guardian_ out from under the copy of _Le Monde_ and unfolds it again, wrinkling her nose in distaste as she looks at the headline.

Dave separates out the first section of _Le Monde_ and clears his throat. “Listen to this,” Dave says. “‘Hope Springs Eternal: The harrowing journey of three young Americans brings renewed faith that miracles still happen in dark times.’”

Kurt and Santana lean in to get a closer look over his shoulders. “Wow,” Santana says. “And I thought we just stole a boat.”

“Shush,” Kurt says quietly. The tiniest glimmer of humor shines in his eye, and Santana, with her uncanny knack for reading Kurt’s moods, just snorts and leans in closer to prop her chin on Dave’s shoulder.

“Keep reading,” she orders him.

“‘Kurt Hummel, Dave Karofsky, and Santana Lopez, 17, are very different people in person from the ones being speculated about on the news and online,’” Dave continues. “‘They aren’t survival experts or experienced sailors. Nor are they gifted with any extraordinary abilities that provided them an edge over anyone else when it came to living to tell the tale of the disaster that struck the Americas two and a half months ago. Rather, as they put it, they are simply a good combination of determined and incredibly lucky.’”

“That’s better than I expected,” Santana says.

“You’re telling me,” Dave agrees. “‘In an unusual display of genuine modesty, the three are quick to refute any suggestion that they could be considered heroes for surviving an ordeal that encompassed one thousand miles of driving through a ravaged countryside and piloting a sailboat they knew next to nothing about across the Atlantic Ocean. “We’re not heroes,” M. Hummel told _Le Monde_ ’s Paulette Durand. “We just took a chance and ran, and hoped that there would be something better waiting for us. There’s nothing heroic about trying to stay alive.” Mlle. Lopez and M. Karofsky expressed similar sentiments.’”

Kurt tugs the edge of the paper toward his side of the chair and scans the article, skimming down a few paragraphs to read ahead in a scratchy voice not much louder than a whisper. “Huh. ‘Upon meeting the trio, one would never guess that before they undertook their journey together, they weren’t what could be called friends by any stretch of the imagination. It’s jarring to hear them speak so candidly about their enmity in high school while seeing them behave so affectionately toward one another. “I was a huge jerk,” M. Karofsky said, and Mlle. Lopez took his hand and added, “The closest we got to friendship was when I blackmailed him into doing what I wanted.” M. Hummel said, more cryptically than his friends, “I was a square peg in a round hole. People often took exception to that, Dave and Santana included.”’ Well, she didn’t take anything out of context, I’ll give her that.”

“Just tell me that the stuff about the Bible is in there,” Santana says. “That was the best part of the whole interview.”

Dave reads further down the page and grins. “Yeah, she kept it in. Here. ‘Throughout most of the interview, the trio seemed disinclined to show strong emotion, steering the conversation away from questions that wandered too close to the more painful experiences they shared while still in the United States. However, upon being told of the Biblical comparisons being made to their journey to safety, they expressed disbelief and strong amusement. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s comparison of their struggle to the Old Testament’s Job was met with M. Karofsky’s succinct response: “That’s the guy who had his life totally ruined because God wanted to see how far He could push things before he snapped, right? I don’t know if I like the idea that the Man Upstairs had it in for us.” Cardinal Gilles Léglise’s parallel between their experience and that of Lot’s family’s flight to safety from Sodom sparked an even more unexpected reaction. After a few seconds of stunned silence, the three teenagers all began laughing hysterically, and it took several minutes for them to calm down enough to stop.’”

Santana sighs in satisfaction and tugs the paper out of Dave’s hands. “I have to admit,” she says, folding it back up and sticking it under her chair, “If we had to do an interview, that’s probably the best one we could have hoped for.”

“It’s not bad,” Dave says. “I just hope it makes people stop thinking we’re fucking heroes. It’s bullshit.”

“This shit’s just fucking surreal,” Santana says. “All I wanted was a roof over our heads without any zombies to worry about. I did not sign up for being a fucking international symbol of hope or whatever that diplomat called us.”

“Think we escaped one hell just to end up in another?” Dave asks.

“Sartre said that hell is other people,” Kurt says. “But at least these people aren’t flesh eating monsters.”

An unfamiliar voice breaks into the conversation. “It’s a relief to know we come out ahead when compared to zombies.”

They look up to see a handsome man in his thirties dressed in a blue button up shirt and khaki pants standing in the doorway holding a folder in his hands. “I don’t take any offense,” he says, smiling. His accent is like Paulette Durand’s, faint but noticeable. “It’s understandable that you would be uneasy with the fame that has been thrust upon you because of your arrival on our shores.”

Santana poses the same question to him as she had to Ms. Takahashi. “Who are you?”

“Yves Roux,” he says, crossing the room to shake their hands. “I’ve been sent to show you the housing options we put together for you yesterday.”

Dave wonders briefly if he should feel guilty that everyone seems to be bending over backwards to accommodate them, but decides against it. They didn’t ask for any of this crap, and if getting people to do stuff for them makes it easier to avoid dealing with this shithole situation and just stay away from it all, then fuck it, he’ll take whatever they offer. “Cool.”

“As soon as your American embassy passed along your request for a residence outside the city, we looked through all possibilities that fit the parameters specified,” Yves says. “These are the five best options we came up with.”

He hands Kurt the folder, and Kurt flips it open and removes a thin sheaf of paper. “Where are they?” he asks.

“Small towns in the Seine-et-Marne department outside Paris,” Yves says. He points to the bottom line of the short paragraph of text beneath the top photo of a house. “You see there, we have given the name of the town and the population.”

Kurt passes over the first page without comment, and Dave immediately sees why. The photo of the house is almost perfectly framed, but the camera couldn’t manage to leave out the two houses pressed up against either side. He hands it to Santana and she shakes her head as well.

“That’s a no to Nemours, then?” Yves asks.

“That’s a no,” Santana says.

Provins is discarded when they read below the photo of the house that it is located within the town, and while the photo of Annet-sur-Marne looks beautiful, the map beside it shows five large highways leading into the city, and they pass over that one as well. They have the same problem with Bailly-Romainvilliers that they did with the second option, despite the population being less than half that of Provins.

They’re paranoid, and they know they’re paranoid. But Dave would dare anyone to spend a single day in what was left of the US and come out of it wanting to live on a narrow street with neighbors all around them. They’ve earned the right to be paranoid. No one can say it’s not justified.

“What’s left?” he asks Kurt.

Kurt smiles and gives him the paper. “A safe place.”

The photo is of an old millhouse, water wheel just barely visible from the view of the front of the house. There’s a narrow gravel driveway and a decent sized lawn out front, with a low stone fence surrounding the property. And in the far corner of the photo Dave can just make out shining blue water. He smiles as well and passes it to Santana.

“It’s outside the commune,” Yves says, eager to sell them on the only option they haven’t nixed. “And the population is very small, only four thousand. We hope to someday split it into two homes, but of course we won’t do that until you’re comfortable with the idea.” When none of them say anything, he adds, “The Grand Marin River is very beautiful.”

“How many bedrooms were there again?” Dave asks Santana.

It’s Kurt who answers. “Six.”

Six, just like Kurt wanted. Just in case.

They’re paranoid, they’re damaged, they’re underweight, they’re one more unpleasant surprise from a total breakdown. Hope like that could kill them.

Hope like that could save them.

Dave takes the page back from Santana and rereads the bottom line. “Looks like we’re going to Crécy-la-Chapelle.”

It’s the next best thing to having their real homes back. And they’ve learned to take what they can get.


	7. Days Ninety-One, One Hundred Six, and One Hundred Twenty-Nine

Day 91

 

“Y’all okay back there?”

Dave shrugs at Joe’s question. “Fine.”

“Not much farther,” Joe says. Their temporary guardian glances at the three of them in the rearview mirror with washed-out blue eyes that are currently filled with faint concern. “Only have about an hour more driving to go.”

“We’re fine,” Kurt says shortly. The weak, croaky voice he had at the hospital has settled into a quiet rasp that dropped the pitch of his voice out of the clear, high voice he once had. It’s less startling, but then, it’s less sweet, and Dave feels a pang of secondhand loss for Kurt.

Down at knee level where Joe can’t see, Kurt and Santana clutch hands, their free hands hovering by their sides as if feeling for guns they no longer have. On Santana’s other side Dave can feel her leg muscles tensed and quivering. She’s prepared to run at any second the moment they spot trouble.

Yeah, they’re fine. They’re so fine. They’re so fine they have to drive all the way from La Rochelle to Crécy-la-Chapelle because being stuck in an airplane they couldn’t escape from was too terrifying to even think of doing, and taking the train would surround them with hundreds of strangers, potential zombies just waiting to happen. They’re so fine they had to alter the route like they did back in the US, changing a five hour drive into a seven and a half hour drive to avoid Paris entirely.

The hospital was easier. It was quiet and clean and private. There were never more than four people besides them in their room. It wasn’t the ocean, it wasn’t a road, there weren’t cars or gas stations everywhere. It didn’t remind them of anything from before. The drive to their new home is a different story.

Dave has been watching Kurt from the corner of his eye for the past few hours. His friend has gone from impassive to grim, from stiff to rigid, from quietly worried to silent terror. Santana isn’t much better off, and Dave isn’t far behind them. They have seen too much, lived through too much, to turn off the bone deep fear that at any minute this will all come crashing down around their heads.

Joe looks at them again, just a quick peek in the mirror. It’s the same speculative look he’s been shooting them since they met last week, the one that wonders what exactly they are to each other. It’s irritating, but he’s the only one who didn’t ask stupid questions at the interview, and he’s the only one with a military background. Between those two things and him being bigger and burlier than Dave at his healthiest, there wasn’t much of a choice about who to be stuck with for a month or so. They don’t have to really like Joe to find him useful, and usefulness is the important thing.

Dave expects that the speculative look this time, the one they’ve been getting every hour or so, has to do with where they’re sitting. There’s a perfectly good passenger seat up in the front by Joe, and from the way he acted when they got out to the car this morning he’d probably been expecting one of them to take it. They didn’t so much as touch the handle, instead sliding into the backseat together, shoulders and thighs and knees and feet all pressed together tightly.

It feels right. It feels good. It feels like safety.

He frees his arm from where it’s trapped between his side and Santana’s and stretches it out across the top of the backseat. His fingers just barely brush against the back of Kurt’s head, but he runs his thumb down the prominent vertebrae of his neck gently, bringing his fingertips to rest at the junction between Kurt’s neck and shoulder. “Almost there,” he says, pitching his voice low and quiet. Kurt leans back just the tiniest fraction of an inch. Dave wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been touching him.

Joe looks back at them again, and Dave meets his eyes challengingly, raising an eyebrow. He wants to dare their guardian to ask, to stop looking at them like he suspects what they have isn’t platonic. But Joe’s never going to do it. It wouldn’t be polite, and he has to be polite to them, because they’re fucking “heroes,” and making them unhappy is the last thing anyone wants to do.

Fuck his curiosity. If he can’t bring himself to ask, they’re sure as hell not going to explain anything. He wouldn’t understand it anyway.

Santana leaves off searching for her shotgun and grabs on to Dave’s jeans, twisting the loose denim in her clenched fist. He sets his free hand on top of hers and squeezes lightly. “Almost there,” he says again. He’s not sure if he’s trying to convince himself or Santana more.

He sees an unmoving, faint dark shape ahead on the side of the road and stills as a cold sweat breaks out all over his body. Jesus, no. It can’t be. They’re done, it’s safe, it’s over. No. It’s just –

The shape comes into focus. Black. Shiny. Boxy. Windows. Four wheels.

It’s not possible, it’s just a car, there’s nothing to be scared of. It won’t be abandoned. There won’t be a corpse in the front seat.

Santana and Kurt see it at the same time. Santana lets out a panicked noise, looking around wildly before burying her face in Dave’s chest, shaking all over. And Kurt – Kurt yanks his seatbelt off and drops to the car floor, staring unseeingly at Dave’s knees as he takes shallow, rapid breaths.

“No no no no nonononono,” Kurt moans.

Dave fumbles for Kurt’s shoulder and clutches them both to him as close as he can, eyes screwed tight and trying his best not to fall apart. “Pull over!”

To his credit, Joe doesn’t hesitate, and swerves out of the lane to park on the packed dirt bordering the country highway. “What can I do?” he asks immediately.

“Get out,” Dave tells him, shuddering. He opens his eyes to shoot him a pleading look. “Get out and tell us there are people by that fucking car. Tell us why there’s a fucking car on the side of the fucking highway.”

Joe gets out of the car at a speed that belies his bulk and runs down the highway to the car. Dave just hunches over his family and prays to a god he lost faith in three months ago.

He doesn’t know how long it takes Joe to get back. Probably minutes, but it seem like an eternity has passed. But eventually Joe slips back into his seat and twists around to say, “It’s just a couple of Parisians headed back from a weekend trip. They ran out of gas.”

Tears of relief prick Dave’s eyes. “Santana? Santana, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

“Really?” she asks in a tiny voice, muffled against his shirt.

“Really.” He rubs her back and says, “I don’t want to let go. But look down. I have to – it’s not –”

She lifts her head and chances a peek at the floor. “Oh.” She pulls back slowly, wiping her wet cheeks with the heels of her palms. “Yes.”

Dave opens his door and gets out for a bare second to squeeze back in, kneeling on the floor between the passenger seat and his own. He takes Kurt’s face between his hands and angles it up, bringing Kurt’s blank eyes to his own. “Kurt. Tell me where we are.”

“Lima,” he whispers. The quiver in his voice breaks Dave’s heart.

“No,” Dave says softly. “We’re in France. Remember France?”

“W-we…we took a boat,” Kurt says. “We took a boat.”

“And we were rescued,” Dave says. “Kurt, would I ever lie to you?”

Kurt’s eyes start to lose the terrifying emptiness that fills them, and he says, shaky but certain, “Never.”

“Then believe me when I say we’re safe,” Dave tells him. He slides his hands down to cradle Kurt’s too-sharp jaw. “We’re safe.”

Kurt refocuses on Dave’s eyes. “Dave,” he says, and then stronger, “Oh, god. Dave.”

“Yeah.” He tries to smile. “That’s me.”

“What happened?”

“Car on the side of the highway,” Dave says. “Couple of dumbasses ran out of gas. We just – didn’t handle it well.”

Kurt’s cheeks flush with humiliation, and he averts his eyes. “You didn’t go crazy.”

“I freaked out big time,” Dave says. He lets his hands fall away to take Kurt’s and holds his fingertips to his carotid artery. His pulse is still racing.

“But still,” Kurt says.

Dave cuts him off. “No buts,” he says. “Ballast to your hot air balloon, right?”

Kurt shakes his head. “That was there, though.”

“And here, and the house we picked, and wherever we go after,” Dave says, again trying and failing to smile. “I promise. I’ll never let you down when you need me.”

Kurt meets his eyes again and exhales shakily. “Thank you.”

“There’s nothing to thank,” Dave says. “Are you okay to keep going? We can stay as long as you need.”

“I’m alright,” Kurt says. He squares his shoulders and gives Dave a wobbly smile. “Let’s go home.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Dave backs out through the open door, and Kurt pulls himself back up onto the seat.

Santana latches onto Kurt with an enormous hug, her back against the opposite door and her hips angled toward Kurt. She hasn’t stopped crying yet, and a wave of guilt washes over Dave for focusing on Kurt when she still needed reassurance. “I love you,” she says, sounding so ferocious it almost comes out as angry. “I love you so much.”

Kurt wraps his arms around her, holding her tight and touching his forehead to hers. “I love you too. Always.”

“We can go,” Dave tells Joe, closing the door behind him and strapping himself in.

“Drive fast,” Santana adds. She loosens her grip on Kurt and wordlessly coaxes him down into putting his head in her lap. His bony hipbone juts into Dave’s thigh, but he couldn’t care less. Instead, he laces his fingers through Kurt’s and forces himself to relax.

“No problem,” Joe says, and he starts up the car again, pulling onto the highway and taking off at around fifteen miles above the speed limit.

Dave wants to close his eyes and keep them closed until they get there. They don’t need to run across anything else like that ever again. They don’t need to fall apart at the sight of a car or empty gas station. They just need each other. He reaches across Kurt and carefully wipes the tears away from under Santana’s eyes with the back of his index finger. “We’ll get through this,” he says. “We will.”

“Us against the world,” Santana says quietly. “Fuck the rest of them. Nobody else matters.”

Kurt gives an indistinct murmur of agreement.

Dave looks up to see Joe watching them again. The speculation is gone. All that’s left is a sad understanding.

“Don’t,” he says, glaring at Joe’s reflection in the mirror. He tries hard to push the unspoken words into their guardian’s skull.

Don’t fucking pity us. Don’t you dare.

***

They all slump back in their seats as soon as they’re through the gate. Joe parks carefully a few yards shy of the front door and unbuckles his seatbelt to turn in his seat and face them. “We made it in one piece,” he says. “Want to take your bags up and pick your rooms now, or do you want to check out the place?”

Dave stares up at the millhouse through the windshield. It’s older in person than it looked in the photograph, but he gets the feeling that people have put a lot of effort over the years to keep it in good condition. The exterior walls are stone, a soft gray-white that fits into the greenery surrounding it, and the roof looks like it might be slate. There’s more width than height to it, giving it a weighty, dependable look. It’s not a house he’d have trouble being comfortable in. “Kurt? What do you think?”

“Let’s see the inside before we explore the outside,” Kurt says. His voice is steady again. His eyes are once more taking in everything, noticing, assessing, evaluating. “We’ll want to have dinner soon.”

“I’ll make it while you get acquainted with the house,” Joe says. He gets out and pops the trunk.

Santana follows his lead, and Kurt slips out after her. Dave takes a moment to look at the millhouse again, admiring the early evening sun glinting off the narrow windows of the outbuilding to the back of the house. This could work.

“Coming?” Santana calls to him, and he opens his door and slides out. His spine pops as he stretches.

Joe pulls out two large suitcases full of clothes provided by one of the groups of people who’ve taken an interest in them. Dave can’t remember if it was the Americans or the French. “I’ll be back for the other two,” he says.

“No need,” Dave says, and he intercepts Santana and Kurt to take the other two. “I’ve got it.” He ignores their put out looks and starts walking to the front door.

They all file in together, one right after another. Joe’s waiting for them in the hall with their bags.

“Pretty,” Santana says, looking around at the white plaster walls and exposed beams. “Not bad.”

“Where are the bedrooms?” Kurt asks.

“Two on the ground floor, four on the first,” Joe tells them. “I have a room in the building out back, so whichever ones you want are fine by me.”

“Four upstairs?” Kurt’s mouth curves in that faint smile he’s taken to making when he’s feeling alright. “That sounds good to me.”

“It sounds better than good,” Santana says, and Dave nods.

“Lay on, MacDuff,” Kurt says to Joe.

Joe grins and picks up one of the suitcases. “And damned be him that first cries ‘Hold, enough!’”

A brief spark of interest lights Kurt’s eyes, and suddenly Dave can’t help liking Joe just a little.

Their guardian keeps up a running commentary as they climb the narrow staircase. “There’s a bathroom up there, and another one off the front hall. Ground floor’s living space – bedrooms in the back, kitchen and dining room to the left, living room, library and study to the right. Basement’s used for storage right now, but you can do what you want with it. Garden’s out back, so’s the well, and you can’t miss the river.”

“How old is this place?” Santana asks.

“Seventeenth century,” Joe says offhandedly. “Last owner did a lot of renovation. Electric wiring, plumbing, central heating and all that.”

“Whoa.” Dave looks at the walls with renewed interest. “That’s pretty cool.”

They reach the landing, and Joe inclines his head in both directions down the hall. “King and two queens down that way, another king and the bathroom down the other.”

There wasn’t any need to even talk amongst themselves to come to a decision. Not where something like this was concerned. They set off down the hall to the three bedrooms, leaving Joe to bring up the rear. Santana opens the door to the right and nods decisively, crooking her finger at Dave, and he and Kurt follow her into a decent sized room done up in soft shades of yellow and white. The queen sized bed lies square in the middle of the room, headboard snug against the wall. Up against the adjoining wall is a wardrobe of dark wood. It’s a friendly room. A warm room.

“I’ll take it,” she says. Dave drops her suitcase just inside the door. “Next?”

“Let’s find out,” Dave says. They head back out into the hall and open the next door they see.

“I suppose we’ve found mine,” Kurt says, sweeping his eyes across the room. It’s nearly identical to Santana’s but for the muted blue-gray colors and the small rectangular window above the bed. “I like it.”

Dave knows why. It’s not a friendly room, or a warm room. It’s quiet, and it’s restful. It’s the best room Kurt could have.

Joe hands off Kurt’s suitcase to Dave, and Dave deposits it right inside just like he did for Santana. “Guess that leaves the last one for me,” he says.

“Big guy, big bed,” Santana says, and she ducks under his arm to reach the door at the end of the hall first. “This is good,” she says with finality, as if daring anyone to challenge her statement.

Dave looks over her head and has to agree. It isn’t much bigger than Kurt and Santana’s rooms, but it’s a little wider, and the bed, neatly made with a dark blue bedspread, dominates the room. There’s no color scheme to his room; it’s all clean and crisp white, relaxing and refreshing at the same time. “Great.” He wiggles around Santana and goes inside to dump his suitcase at the foot of the bed.

“It works,” Kurt says quietly, eyes fixed on the bed.

“No argument here,” Santana says.

Dave reaches back and grabs the first hand he finds, not caring whose it is. “It’s just right.”

Joe clears his throat. “I’ll be downstairs making dinner,” he says. “Shout if you need me.”

They don’t say a word in response, and after a few seconds Dave hears his footsteps retreating back down the hall to the stairs. A few seconds more go by, and Santana asks diffidently, as if she couldn’t care less, “Want to check out the rest of the house?”

The hand in Dave’s slips free and Kurt moves past him to sit on the bed. “Not a chance,” he says, unlacing his shoes and falling back against the mattress, arms outstretched.

Santana grabs Dave’s arm for balance and kicks off her shoes. “I’d hoped you’d say that.” She takes a running leap and launches herself onto the bed, wrapping herself around Kurt like an octopus. “Get over here,” she demands, looking over at Dave.

Dave toes his shoes off and goes around to the other side of the bed, collapsing by Santana’s side. Santana rolls into him, still clinging to an unresisting Kurt, and Dave slides his arm beneath their bodies to pull them closer. “We’re going to be alright,” he says. “We really are.”

Santana laughs. It’s just a little laugh, and it doesn’t last long, but it’s still a laugh. “I keep telling you. We’re just too awesome for it to go any other way.”

“Mm-hmm.” A bit of the lingering tension seeps out of Kurt’s shoulders. “Think Joe knows how to cook?”

“As long as it doesn’t come from a can I couldn’t give a shit,” Dave says honestly.

“Yeah,” Santana says. “Me neither.”

“I agree completely,” Kurt says. “And speaking of agreeing, we are going to sleep in here, right?”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Santana says.

Dave just squeezes them lightly and closes his eyes. It’s been too long, and there’s nothing in the world right now that he wants more than to take a nap with the two most important people in the world.

 

Day 106

 

“I’m raising your dose of Paxil to forty milligrams,” Dr. Moreau says, dashing off a note on her prescription pad and handing it to Kurt. “We’ll continue with the psychotherapy on Thursdays.”

Kurt folds the prescription into quarters and sticks it in his pocket to give to Joe later. “We’ll see you in a couple days, then.”

“And don’t forget, Kurt,” she says firmly, dark eyes serious and direct, “I want you to call me if you have another flashback. Day or night.”

“Right,” Kurt says. “Sure.” He leaves the study as fast as he can and heads to the kitchen to grab something to eat for a mid-afternoon snack. There’s nothing like a quick bite to eat to get the sour taste of talking about PTSD and survivor’s guilt out of his mouth.

There’s nothing like knowing he can have a quick bite to eat whenever he’s hungry without it endangering their lives.

He cuts three thick slices off the huge loaf of soft country bread on the counter and spreads them thickly with butter from the crock by the stove. The sweet strawberry preserves in the refrigerator top them off. He locates three sturdy stoneware plates and three tall glasses, and pours a generous measure of milk into each one. The bread and milk all get set on a large tray, and he makes his way past the back staircase and out to the garden.

Santana discards her textbook and jumps up to take the tray at the sound of the creaky door opening. “Food!” she says. “A distraction, thank god!”

“It’s not that bad,” Dave says, accepting a plate and glass from Santana and setting aside his own textbook.

“Speak for yourself,” Santana says. “You aren’t the one who needs a French to English dictionary to get through the assignments.” She hands Kurt the last glass of milk and plate and takes an enormous bite of her own bread. “How’d it go?”

“The same,” Kurt says. “New dose, more therapy. ‘Any flashbacks? Any panic attacks? Call me.’”

Of course he’d have PTSD. Of course he’d be the one who fell apart the worst when they stopped being in constant danger. It’s downright humiliating. Even Santana managed to escape it with a diagnosis of panic disorder, and Dave… well. Kurt would kill to have general anxiety disorder instead. It doesn’t matter that they tell him he’s not weak, that he didn’t let anyone down, that he’s still their “fearless leader.” It feels like a lie.

“Minus the flashbacks, that’s probably how it’s going to go for me,” Santana says. She polishes off the bread and drains her glass. “I hate Mondays. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” Kurt and Dave tell her. There’s less humor in it than there should be. They all hate seeing Dr. Moreau. She’s nice, and smart, and they need her, but they can’t help it.

She jumps up and goes inside with a quick touch to the back of Kurt’s head, reassuring the both of them that they’re still there.

“We brought your books out,” Dave says, raising a history text for proof. “Feel like joining in?”

“I think I’m going to garden,” Kurt says. “History can wait.” He finishes his bread and jam with slow, measured bites, rolling his head from side to side to loosen his neck muscles. He always tenses up after seeing Dr. Moreau.

“Want some help?”

“Of course.” Kurt stands and offers a hand up to Dave. Dave’s kind enough to pretend Kurt has regained the strength needed to pull him to his feet.

Their garden didn’t come with the fruits and vegetables they’d dreamed of on the boat. When they decided to poke around the property the first full day after their arrival, they discovered that it was filled with lilies, irises, daffodils, and small rosebushes. It was charming and beautiful, and for the most part it still is, other than the far corner by the well where they tore out the flowers to make room for a vegetable patch. Joe didn’t think they’d have much luck planting anything in the middle of August, but they’d insisted and he’d come up with a list of vegetables they could grow without any trouble.

Kurt drops to his knees beside the dark patch of soil and reaches for a spade. “She’s put me on the highest dose that’s typically prescribed, you know,” he says conversationally, as if his situation wasn’t gnawing away at him constantly. He digs into the soft soil to create a hole for one of the seedlings and wonders what the people in charge of paying their bills must think of them.

“You always were an overachiever,” Dave says mildly. Kurt can’t help smiling a bit. Even when he’s feeling weak, and ashamed at his weakness, Dave always manages to keep his head above water instead of letting him drown in his bad mood.

“Give me one of the pea sprouts,” he says, holding out a hand.

Dave gently removes the sprout from its plastic container and loosens the web of roots at the bottom before passing it over. “I can’t wait to eat these,” he says. “Hey – want to do tomatoes next spring?”

“You know,” Kurt says, settling the little plant into its hole and very loosely packing soil over the dirt from the container, “I’d forgotten.”

“Hmm?”

“That there’s going to be a spring.” He resumes digging in the soil and adds, “I’d love to plant tomatoes then.”

He doesn’t look, but there’s something in the short silence following his response that tells him Dave just smiled.

“Sixteen days and we get rid of Joe,” Dave says.

Kurt can’t wait until Dave turns eighteen. Sixteen days is too long. But on the other hand, he’s not looking forward to having to go into town to buy their own groceries or get their prescriptions refilled. Maybe they’ll see if they can hire someone. “What do you want to do to celebrate?”

“Maybe do something different with the living room,” Dave says. “Turn it into a den or something. Games, a bigger couch, maybe a better TV.”

“That’s a worthwhile project.” Kurt accepts another bean sprout to plant and spreads fresh soil around its base once it’s in the hole.

It truly is a worthwhile project. The millhouse is the perfect place to recover. No one intrudes upon their privacy; it’s quiet and peaceful and beautiful. But it feels a bit like they’re tiptoeing around themselves, avoiding doing anything that might make them laugh or really let their guard down. Kurt suspects it’s because they don’t want to feel truly happy when they’ve lost so much. That’s how he feels, anyway.

He feels like he doesn’t deserve it.

They work in silence for a while, Kurt digging holes and planting the young vegetables while Dave prepares them for their new home in the ground. The repetitive work is soothing, and the muscles between Kurt’s shoulder blades slowly unclench as they go.

“So I have a question that’s probably inappropriate and definitely has shitty timing,” Dave says as they start in on the turnips.

“Given how frank you tend to be, it’s amazing you were ever good at lying,” Kurt says, and Dave laughs.

“Yeah, well.”

“Go ahead and ask,” Kurt says. “It’s fine.”

Dave passes him a few turnip seeds and says carefully, “We said we’d talk when we were safe.”

“We did.” Kurt drops the seeds into the little holes he’s dug in a neat row toward the back and covers them with soil. “I’m not ready for that particular conversation. But I am ready to talk.”

“I’m listening,” Dave says.

Kurt sets the spade aside and turns to face Dave, sitting cross-legged on the short grass. “We’re safe,” he begins. “And we’re recovering, and we’re grieving. And these are all good things. That’s what I said we’d do when we talked.”

Dave nods. “I remember.”

“When I said it at the time, I honestly had no idea how much the both of you would come to mean to me,” Kurt says. “There are only two people left in this world that I love: you and Santana. There’s no limit to how much I love you both. You’ve seen me at my worst and not lost faith in me. I trusted you with my life for two and a half months when every day could have been our last, and I’ll trust you until the day I die. But I absolutely cannot start anything right now.”

“I understand completely,” Dave says. He doesn’t look even the slightest bit disappointed, to Kurt’s relief, but Kurt still has to correct him.

“No, you don’t,” he tells him. “I love you and Santana. I don’t love myself. I don’t even like myself. I can’t look in the mirror without wondering why I lived when better people – kinder, smarter, more talented people – died. There is a crack running through me that I’m desperately trying to fix, because if it gets any wider I’m going to stop being damaged and just break.”

“Kurt,” Dave says, reaching out with dirt-streaked hands.

Kurt takes them tentatively in his own, studying the dark brown soil that’s worked its way under his nails. The grit feels real, grounding. It’s been a while since he’s felt so tied to his immediate surroundings without any fear or ruthless calculation involved.

He casts his mind back, trying to remember the date their world went to hell. Just three months since it started, and now he relishes the dirt under his fingernails and on his jeans. No wonder he sometimes feels so lost. He’s half a world away from Lima. He’s a universe away from the Kurt Hummel of mid-May.

“I know that someday I’ll stop feeling like this,” Kurt says with a conviction he only half believes. “And I promise that the day I can look in the mirror and smile at my reflection, we’ll have the conversation that we should have.”

“I love you,” Dave says seriously. “You deserve to be happy. And I can wait. Waiting’s easy. Watching you get there is the hard part.”

“We all have a ways to go,” Kurt says. He doesn’t say that his road feels like it’ll never end.

“Yeah,” Dave agrees. “But no one said we have to go it alone. So lean on me when you need to, okay?”

“Just you try and stop me,” Kurt says. He hesitates for a moment, searching Dave’s face. All he sees is the steady support that’s been there since they all poured their hearts out that first night on the boat, and he leans in to brush a swift, light kiss across his lips. “I hope that’s good enough for now.”

Dave just offers him a smile. “You know it is.”

Kurt pulls his hands free and looks away, unsettled and off-balance. “Where were we?” he asks.

“Turnips,” Dave says. “Turnips, and then lettuce.”

“Let’s get back to it,” Kurt says. He picks up the spade and digs into the soil once more.

At his side, Dave begins humming as he sorts out the seed packets. Kurt doesn’t know whether it’s out of habit or instinct, but he joins in, singing quietly in a voice that sounds nothing like his own.

“Hey Jude, don’t be afraid. Take a sad song and make it better,” he sings. It sounds like he’s been chain smoking for ten years. It’s lower, and it’s gravelly, and it’s not the way he was ever meant to sing.

But he’s on pitch, and this stranger’s voice is the best thing he’s heard come out of his mouth in over a month.

“Remember to let her into your heart, then you can start to make things better.”

 

Day 129

 

“I’m not going to pass French,” Santana says, her bare feet propped up on Kurt’s lap and her head resting on a cushion at the opposite end of the couch. She juggles her French text, her dictionary, and her notebook on her stomach, picking them up and setting them down fast enough to make her head hurt. “Seriously, this is just going to drive me nuts.”

“You have a year to pick it up,” Kurt points out. “And if you aren’t ready, I’m sure the British government will be accommodating enough to let you take their A-levels or whatever the SAT equivalent is.” He writes down an answer to an algebra problem in his notebook and sticks his pencil behind his ear.

“Isn’t it supposed to be easier to pick up another language when you’re already bilingual?” Dave asks, craning his head around to look at Santana from his position on the floor.

She shifts all her books to one arm and tousles his hair. He hasn’t cut it short yet, and there’s a slight wave to it that’s fun to play with when she’s bored. “Kind of yes, kind of no. It depends on the language. This one should be easier, but it’s not. I’d probably have better luck with Italian or Portuguese or something.”

“Or Welsh,” Kurt suggests. “They have the same grammar structure that we do.”

Dave leans into her fingers and shifts his calculus book off to the side. “How’d you learn that?”

“Marnie Jones’ dad was from Wales,” Kurt says.

It takes Santana a moment to place her. Oh, right. The cute little theatre geek with the button nose. Poor kid. She had been sweet, in a mousy kind of way. “Did she ever teach you anything?”

“Just one thing.” In a painstakingly slow voice, tripping over the unfamiliar syllables, Kurt recites, “Nad ydych yn gwybod yr hyn rwyf yn ei ddweud.”

“That’s an actual language?” Dave asks incredulously. “What the hell does it even mean?”

“I have no clue.” Kurt takes up his pencil again to scribble down another answer. “But it sounds really interesting.”

“You have to be fucking with us,” Santana says.

“Trust me,” Kurt says. “When I decide to mess with you, you’ll know.”

Santana wiggles her feet in Kurt’s lap with delight. Very little makes her happier than when Kurt actually joins in on the joking. “I’ll believe it when I hear it,” she tells him.

He picks her feet up and shifts them onto his knees. “Your heels need to stay away from certain parts of my body.”

“My apologies, fearless leader,” she says. “I’ll try not to damage the goods.” The corners of his mouth lift in a small smile, and she wiggles her feet again.

“I forgive you,” he says, still smiling that little smile of his. “Look, why don’t you get started on chemistry or algebra? There’s not nearly as much French as there is in the French and history textbooks.”

“I knew there was I reason I like you,” she says. She shoves her pile of books to the floor and grabs her chemistry book in their stead. “Ooh, reaction rates. My favorite.”

“Don’t worry,” Dave says. “The next one’s acids and bases – it’s really easy.”

“You big geek,” she says, running her fingers through his hair one more time before turning back to her text.

“Uh-huh.” He absentmindedly wraps his left hand around Kurt’s ankle loosely while writing out a lengthy answer to a problem with his right. Looking just as distracted, Kurt shifts in his seat, bringing his leg closer to Dave’s hand.

Something happened between her boys recently. She’s not sure what, and she doesn’t want to ask, but something’s definitely different. It’s not that their bubble of personal space is bigger or smaller, or that they talk more or less, or even that things have changed emotionally. They just seem – calmer. That’s the word for it.

“So what did Alain bring for us to burn in the fireplace today?” Santana asks, putting the thought from her mind. Alain, the local grocer, had signed a confidentiality agreement not to reveal their names and address right before Joe went back to Paris, allowing the three of them to avoid going into town to pick up groceries and their mail. Wednesdays are his weekly mail and grocery delivery, and Alain had handed off the bundle of letters to Dave at the gate when he arrived with the large basket of groceries this morning.

“Still no fan mail, thank fucking god,” Dave says. “Yves is good about not letting it come through. But he did forward another three requests for us to speak at these big shot colleges and city halls and shit. Um – Imperial College London and Universitat de Barcelona. And the capital building in, um, Edinburgh, I think.”

“You told them all to fuck off, right?” Santana asks.

“You mean did I write back and say ‘We’re flattered, but we won’t be making public speeches or appearances for the foreseeable future?’” Dave says. “Yeah.”

“You should trademark that answer,” Santana tells Kurt. “How many times have we used it now?”

“Sixteen including today’s,” Kurt says. “I don’t know what they’re expecting to hear, anyway.”

“A big, exciting story about crap they’ll never do, and what to do if they’re ever in our shoes,” Dave says. “They’ll be all awed and excited and getting their rocks off over how dangerous it sounds. Then they’re going to start thinking about how _cool_ it sounds. People are going to start thinking, ‘Hey, if a couple kids could do it, I bet I could do it too.’ Then some idiot’s going to get himself killed, and we’re going to have to make a statement about how it’s not fun and games, and we’ll have to go back to giving talks and hammering it into their thick fucking skulls that it wasn’t some sort of fucking extended weekend warrior vacation.”

“I love how optimistic you are,” Santana says. “I really do.”

“You know that’s how it would be,” Dave says. “What’s that quote, Kurt?”

“Hell is other people.”

“Sounds about right,” Dave says. He shrugs. “I mean, I’d never think that about you, and there are a couple folks from the embassy, plus Yves, Joe, Alain, and Dr. Moreau. But the bigger the crowd of people, the stupider they get, and the more dangerous they get, too.”

“For real,” Santana says. She slams her chemistry book shut and sighs. “Kind of puts a big fat ‘hell no’ on ever going to college, doesn’t it?”

“On a campus? Yeah,” Dave says.

“There’s still distance learning,” Kurt says. “We’re not going to be unable to get degrees.” The side of his upper lip twitches up in self-contempt. “Double negative. I’m slipping.”

“Don’t worry,” Santana says, stifling amusement. “We love you anyway.”

Kurt shuts his math book as well, tossing it to the floor. “I give up. I officially can’t concentrate.”

“It’s official, huh?” Santana says. “In that case, we’d better find something less boring to do.”

“Chess? Poker?” Dave suggests. “Mario Kart?”

“Mario Kart,” Santana says. “Kurt?”

Kurt nods reluctantly, and Santana sits up to hug him hard. It’s not easy to get him to have fun without working hard to convince him. It’s hard enough convincing herself. But when Kurt agrees to have fun, she knows she has to have fun too.

Maybe it was a stupid decision to get a video game about racing cars when they fixed up the living room for Dave’s birthday, but it hasn’t sent her or Kurt into a panic attack yet.

“Get the Wii remotes,” she tells Dave. “Dibs on Bowzer.”

“I get Princess Peach?” Dave asks, standing and going to the cabinet by the TV. “Awesome.”

As was intended, Kurt smiles again. “Dave Karofsky, secure enough in his masculinity to play a little pink princess in a video game. My heart can’t take the shock.”

Dave laughs and slips the disc into the player. “You’ll shut up and play your hyperactive little Yoshi like you always do if you know what’s good for you.” It’s the emptiest threat Santana’s ever heard in her life. Judging by the surprised snort of laughter that it startles out of Kurt, he feels exactly the same.

“Get ready to have your asses handed to you,” Dave says, tossing remotes to Santana and Dave.

“You wish, Princess,” Santana tells him.

He joins them on the big couch, claiming the right hand cushion for himself, and brings up the menu on the first screen. They’re ready to settle in for a couple hours of mindless entertainment. Then the phone rings.

They all sit abruptly upright at the sound. As a general rule, the phone almost never rings. No one calls. Not unless it’s important.

Dave leans over to the side table and stabs the speakerphone button. “Hello?”

Yves’ voice fills the living room. “Dave,” he says instead of his usual polite greeting. “And I assume Kurt and Santana as well.”

“We’re here,” Santana says. “What’s up?”

There’s a palpable pause on Yves’ end of the line, and then he says, “There’s been a rescue.”

Kurt grabs Santana’s wrist, just this side of painful, and leans across her to make himself heard. “Who?” he demands.

“I don’t have that information yet,” Yves says. “But there’s a recording being broadcast on television, and I wanted to let you know. Turn on the news.”

Santana fumbles for her remote and exits out of the game. “Where’s the TV remote?” she demands. Kurt passes it to her, and she switches to TV mode, punching in the channel numbers for France’s BBC news station.

A serious looking reporter in a stiff black suit jacket and maroon tie stares into the camera intently. “More details have yet to be released,” he says, unable to totally conceal the excitement in his voice as he addresses the audience. “But mere hours ago, a search and rescue aeroplane flying over Canada made a stunning discovery when their airband radio picked up some unusual chatter.”

“Canada?” Santana whispers.

“It’s a big country,” Dave says, but his hand is trembling when he takes hers and laces their fingers together.

“Although the identities of the people who were saved have yet to be made public, we at the BBC have obtained a copy of the radio transmission that led to their rescue,” the reporter says. “Anyone with young children watching at home should be advised that there is quite a lot of profanity in the recording.” The reporter disappears from the screen to be replaced by a light blue background. As the recording starts to play, the transcribed words begin to appear.

“ – ank you for tuning in to Zombie Radio, where every hour is ‘Fuck the Zombies’ hour!” an unforgettable male voice says. He sounds tired and weak, but irrepressibly cheerful. “As always, we’re your not really all that humble hosts, the goddamn Puckasaurus and the eternally badass Laurenator. Today’s broadcast is brought to you by a hand-crank generator – never leave home without one, folks.”

“Listeners should remember that every Thursday we give you wild and crazy new ways to kill your undead neighbors, so stay tuned,” an equally familiar female voice adds. “And to any zombies out there listening: it’s zombie hunting season. Consider yourselves warned, assholes.”

Dave slides off the couch with a painful sounding thump, staring dazedly at the screen. “No fucking way,” he says.

On Santana’s other side, Kurt starts to smile, and then to grin, wider and wider until it stretches almost ear to ear. “They made it!”

She’s not sure which of her boys to tackle first, so she grabs Kurt’s shirt and tugs him down to the floor with her, laughing wildly.

“So, Laurenator,” Puck says over Santana’s howls of laughter. “You owe me a Jeopardy rematch.”

“I still think you’re just a sore loser,” Lauren says. “But okay. Today’s categories are ‘How Did We Kill _That_ Zombie,’ ‘Important Tools and Where to Find Them,’ and ‘Our Favorite Badasses.’”

“I’ll take Our Favorite Badasses for six hundred,” Puck says.

Lauren clears her throat. “This Badass is _so_ badass that when she went to get wood from beneath the porch, she brought back a hacksaw too.”

“Who is my little sister?”

“Correct!” Lauren says. “Next?”

“Important Tools for a thousand,” Puck says.

“What do we need to get out of this fucking place, and where can we find it?” Lauren asks.

“No idea, and fuck if I know,” Puck says.

“Correct!” Lauren says again. “Okay, everyone, it’s that time again – we’re gonna shut up for three minutes, and you’d better speak up. If you’re listening, you know the channel, so tell us that you’re out there. If you used to work for the FCC, your complaint about our fucking language is pointless, so don’t even bother.”

Dave’s still staring at the screen with watery eyes, shoulders shaking from silent laughter. Kurt, his eyes wet with unshed tears, hasn’t stopped grinning since the moment they heard Puck’s voice. And Santana’s still practically crying with laughter, but for some reason the screen looks blurry and she can’t read the words anymore.

There’s a long, breathless pause in which the sound from the TV is filled with nothing but faint static. And then a new voice comes on.

“Hey, guys,” the new voice says. It’s male, with an accent that reminds Santana of the Midwest. “First time listener, first time caller, but I’m already a huge fan.”

Static hisses and spits for a few seconds again, and then Puck, sounding stunned, says, “Who the hell are you?”

“Captain James McDowell, US Air Force, at your service. Now what do you say to getting out of here?”

Over the cheers and celebrations on Puck and Lauren’s side of the radio, Santana hears someone rattling off coordinates to the pilot, but she’s already stopped listening. She’s still laughing. She’s laughing and sobbing and struggling to catch her breath, and her heart _hurts_ from how big it feels and how wildly it’s pounding.

“They’re alive,” Dave says in a quiet voice that’s probably meant for his ears alone. “Oh my god. They’re alive.”

“I take it these are people you know?” Yves asks.

They all jump, startled, having forgotten he was still on the line. Kurt hugs Santana from behind and says, “They’re our friends, the ones who went to Canada. Noah, Margaret, and Sarah Puckerman, and Lauren Zizes.”

“Where are they?” Dave asks eagerly.

“I don’t know,” Yves says. “But I would assume in the infirmary on one of the naval carriers. Would you like me to find out more?”

“Find out everything,” Kurt says. “Everything.”

“Don’t let them get sent anywhere but here,” Dave adds. “They have to come here.”

“I’ll be certain to arrange it,” Yves says. “Do you have messages you’d like to have conveyed once it’s possible to communicate with them?”

“Ask Puck if Canadian zombies groan with Canadian accents,” Dave suggests with a giddy, relieved smile, tears still leaking from the corners of his eyes.

“Tell them to get to France before we go even crazier from the anticipation,” Kurt says.

Santana sniffs hard and scrubs her face free of tears before she adds her own message. “Tell them to come home.”

“I’ll do that,” Yves says, and he gets off the phone with a quick goodbye, leaving them with only the sound of the reporter speculating about all the things they didn’t know yet.

Dave turns the television off and shakes his head in disbelief. “They made it.”

“We’re not alone,” Kurt says, and he hugs Santana even tighter. She leans back into his arms and tries to stop crying.

She’s tried so hard to not think about any of them for so long. They’ve been locked away in a little corner of her mind for months. And now the locks have been broken from the inside, and Puck and Lauren have jumped out, alive and apparently unharmed, real and true and still so fantastically sarcastic.

In a way, leaving everyone behind at that crossroads outside of Lima was worse than knowing what happened to people – what happened to most people, anyway, and that’s still a box she won’t open anytime soon. But they knew who was dead, and who was missing. The way they parted that evening was like they suddenly stopped existing, like they’d vanished off the face of the earth.

Here they are, back from wherever it is that things that don’t exist disappear to: Puck and Lauren, Mrs. Puckerman, Puck’s little sister Sarah. They’re back, and they’ll be here, and Santana won’t ever let them stop existing again.

They’re alive. They’re really alive.

Santana loses the battle with her tears and pulls Kurt’s arms more firmly around her. Her throat is tight, her face is wet, her nose is runny.

She doesn’t remember ever being so happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Welsh used in this chapter means "You don't know what I'm saying."


	8. Epilogue: Day One Hundred Forty One

“They’re late,” Santana says, wearing a path in the gravel walkway in agitation as they wait for the arrival of Lauren, Puck, and his family.

From where he stands by the front door, Kurt says, “They might have done what we did and lengthened the drive.”

Dave’s sure they would make an interesting picture to anyone watching. Santana can’t keep still, pacing incessantly and crossing and uncrossing her arms. Kurt looks like he’s leaning against the wall beside the door, completely at ease, but upon closer inspection he’s a study of alert, careful stillness. And Dave sits on the bottom step halfway between the two, legs stretched out in front of him, squinting into the sun and wishing that Puck had a cell phone so that Santana and Kurt would just relax already.

“They could be stuck in traffic,” Santana says. “What if they’re stuck in traffic?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say to that,” Dave says. “Because if I tell you that they’re stuck in traffic, you’ll start worrying about all the bad things that could happen to them if they are. And if I tell you that they aren’t, you’ll worry about all the bad things that could happen to them if they _aren’t_ stuck in traffic.”

Santana stops pacing for a second to raise an eyebrow at him in disbelief. “Like any of that isn’t justified.”

“Play nice, children,” Kurt says impassively with the deadpan humor that’s begun to sneak into his conversations lately. It’s a far cry from the wild swings between giddiness and biting sarcasm he had before, but it’s an improvement, and it still makes Dave grin.

“Have we met?” Santana asks. “I don’t play well with others.”

Dave sighs with exasperation and extends a hand. “Come here,” he says, and as soon as she’s taken his hand he pulls her down to sit beside him. “I get that you’re stressed. But you can’t hide between the queen bitch mask with us. We know you too well.”

“Ugh, I’m sorry,” she apologizes. “I’m freaking out, I know. It’s just been how long since we’ve seen them? Any of them?”

“Too long,” Kurt says. “Far too long.”

It’s an absolute truth, just like Leibniz’ notation or Newton’s laws of motion – and Santana is right about that as well; he was as closeted about being a nerd as he was about being gay. He’ll never tell her he’s thinking about Newton’s Second Law of motion when he thinks about what’s going on. She’d split her sides laughing. It’s not as private a thought as what he writes down in the journal Dr. Moreau makes each of them keep, but it’s still not worth mentioning right now, not with the mood she’s in. She never teases out of anything but love, but there’s a sharp edge to it when she’s as stressed and worried as she is now.

She starts to get to her feet, ready to begin pacing again, and Dave tugs her back down. “What if they crashed on the way here?”

“Highly doubtful,” Kurt says. “Ms. Takahashi wouldn’t trust their lives to a bad driver.”

“Maybe Colonel Peters wanted to get more information about what it’s like on the continent,” Dave suggests. “I mean, now that they’re actually putting search and rescue teams on the ground they probably need to know a lot more.”

“They had them for ten whole days,” Santana says. “Twelve including today and when they were rescued. I’m pretty sure the military got all the information they needed already.”

Dave is still amazed at the rapid change in policy since Kurt and Santana’s friends were rescued. He, Kurt, and Santana had been – still are, much as they hate it – some sort of inspiration that people could escape and survive. Puck and Lauren are proof that there are still people alive back in what used to be home. And so the largest coalition of military forces in history that was doing flyovers across North and South America is rapidly evolving into the largest coalition of military forces in history going into zombie infested territory to find what survivors remain.

Santana fidgets, her knee bouncing up and down uncontrollably. “What if they were mobbed by a huge crowd of people when they left the hospital and they never even made it to their car?”

“What if flying monkeys broke into their hospital room and carried them off?” Dave counters.

“No one knows what they look like,” Kurt adds, “Just like they don’t know what we look like. They’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, because you look so relaxed,” Santana says skeptically.

“Would you prefer it if I worked myself into a panic?” Kurt asks. “Stop. Breathe. For the love of god, Santana, you’re supposed to be better than me at staving off attacks.”

“I’m not panicking,” Santana says. “I’m just –”

“Well on your way there,” Kurt interrupts. “Don’t make it worse.”

It never really startled Dave or Santana that when there’s nothing around to trigger a panic attack or a flashback Kurt’s strict control over his emotions reasserts itself. It had been a shock to Dr. Moreau, as she’d apparently been expecting him to be a lot less composed when she came to the millhouse to be their psychiatrist.

Well, she doesn’t know Kurt. Dave knows that there’s a lot going on under the surface with Kurt. He knows Kurt thinks about before a lot, that when he sits in the garden looking up into the trees with his journal open on his lap to the poem he copied onto the first page, he’s very quietly working through everything that happened, one painful moment at a time. He knows that Kurt avoids making eye contact for hours when he accidentally looks in the mirror after taking a shower, and that sometimes Dave has to go distract him with lessons or gardening or cooking dinner together to keep him from getting lost in guilt.

She doesn’t know Santana, either. She doesn’t know that Santana didn’t cry about Brittany for months after they stole the boat, and that now that they’re safe Dave sometimes finds her in the library curled up in a chair unable to catch her breath she’s crying so hard. She doesn’t know that Santana latches onto them like she’s afraid they’re going to disappear before her eyes and she’s going to be left alone. She doesn’t know that the only time they’ve ever watched TV since getting here is when Yves called and told them to, because reporters talking about before and TV shows with guns or bodies or high speed chases make her hole up in her room all day.

She doesn’t know Dave. Dave catches himself halfway through reminding Kurt or Santana to eat before noticing the plates in their hands. Dave stays up later than them, making sure they’re actually asleep and nightmare free before letting himself do the same. Dave’s journal has nothing to do with his losses and everything to do with their recovery. Dave is the yardstick they measure normal by, and it’s a sign of how screwed up they all are, since he’s nowhere near being mentally healthy.

No one knows them but them, both the good parts and the bad. Kurt’s still serious and practical. Santana’s still impulsive and likes to tease. Dave still can’t break the habit of taking care of them. But infinitesimal changes in quantity over time add up to the net change in the quantity – he’s still never telling Santana that he’s ever compared them to the fundamental theorem of calculus – and they have changed.

They’re themselves. Not the selves they were before, but the selves they became when it happened, and the selves they became after. They’re still serious, or impulsive, or reliable. It’s just that they’re family as well, family so close and familiar and intimate that sometimes they know each other’s minds better than they know their own.

Dr. Moreau calls them codependent and tells them to try to regain some of the independence they once had. They call it the only relationship they have left that matters and don’t care what she’d think about them if she knew they still all share a bed at night.

“What’s it really about?” Dave asks. “Yeah, I know it’s about them being safe, but what else is going on?”

Santana pulls free and jumps to her feet, smoothing her hands down the front of her denim skirt. It’s the most obvious outward sign that Dave’s seen since getting up this morning that she’s nervous about their reunion. She always wears jeans. They’re easier to run in and don’t start to smell for a few days if there’s no change of clothes available on the road. Putting on a skirt means nervousness and insecurity and desperation to please. At least she’s wearing a red shirt. Bright colors mean she’s not having a bad day.

“What if we’re too different?” she asks, eyes darting from Dave to Kurt and back. “What if we’ve changed too much for them to want anything to do with us anymore?”

Kurt pushes off the wall and goes down the steps to stand in front of her, setting a hand on her shoulder. “We’re not going to be the only ones who are different,” he says. “After spending all that time living with zombies, do you honestly believe that they’re the same people they used to be?”

Santana fiddles with the cuff of his sleeve on his free hand, folding it back once, then twice more. “Then what if they’re pissed at us that they’re famous now?”

“They aren’t,” Kurt says. He offers her his other arm so she can give that sleeve the same treatment. “They weren’t when they called us from the hospital.”

That had been a strange conversation, both awkward and fraught with intense emotion that none of them seemed able to express out loud. They’d put each other on speakerphone on both ends of the line and chatted until Margaret got tired and needed to rest, often saying things that meant something else entirely and leaving plenty of lines to read between, deliberately talking around anything related to Rachel Berry and the others who went west that day. One thing that had been made very clear, though, was that none of them blamed Dave, Santana, or Kurt for their sudden popularity. If anything, they were sympathetic to them for what their rescue and newfound fame had done to their own.

Secrets don’t stay secret for long when too many people know them, and once their names and hometown were leaked to the press, it hadn’t taken longer than a couple hours before people put it together: the “Don Quixote Three” knew the people rescued from Canada. Not only did they know them, they were friends.

They’d wondered, without much hope, if having new people to be fascinated by would take the public’s interest off of them. But their relationship with Lauren and Puck and his family only made things worse – not only had they escaped on some crazy, wild journey across the ocean and made it, but the next people to be rescued were their friends.

Puck, Lauren, Margaret, and Sarah are famous.

Kurt, Dave, and Santana are the most unwilling living legends ever.

“I know,” Santana says. She straightens Kurt’s collar unnecessarily. Just like the collar of the white button up shirt she’d had to talk him into wearing with his jeans instead of a tee shirt, Kurt looks neat and tidy, not a hair out of place. As nice as he looks, the clean lines and crisp folds of the shirt only seem to add to his air of quiet, thoughtful gravity, and Dave wishes he and Kurt had been able to resist Santana’s insistence that they put on something halfway nice for when their friends arrive.

At least when Kurt wears tee shirts he seems able to relax just a little more.

“And if they get pissed at us later?” Santana says. “What if they just haven’t gotten mad because it doesn’t feel real yet?”

“Then it’s a good thing it’s a big house,” Dave says. “We can avoid each other until they’re over it.”

“Am I being an idiot?” Santana asks.

“No, but you are making me feel a lot calmer,” Kurt tells her. “Not that I approve of you being anxious enough for the both of us.”

She punches him lightly in the arm and grabs his hand. “I can’t help it. There’s a lot that can go wrong.”

“There’s a lot that can go right,” Kurt says, and at the sound of an approaching car turning off the road he adds, “And we’re about to find out which one of us is right.”

As a sedan pulls through the gate, Dave stands and joins them on the path. The nervousness that Santana has been monopolizing makes a sudden reappearance, and his stomach lurches. One awkward conversation in two weeks doesn’t mean they’re going to live as happily ever after as is possible for people like them, but he can’t help hoping that things will work out.

The car stops, and the passenger door opens to let out a frail looking middle aged woman, her black hair shot through with gray, no doubt from stress. The two back doors open, and Puck and Lauren get out, Puck lean and wiry, shaggy hair falling across his forehead, Lauren of average size but looking incredibly unhealthy, the image of someone who’s lost too much weight in too short a time. They stare at each other across the several yards separating them. Even though they aren’t his friends the way they’re Kurt and Santana’s, he still wants to run over and hug them and hear all that they have to say. But even the smallest doubt that it might not be real keeps him frozen in place.

Then a little girl, barely older than twelve, pushes Puck out of her way and climbs out of the car, all knees and elbows and skinny limbs. Her bright eyes land on Santana, and with a shriek she all but flies from beside the car, across the lawn, and into Santana’s arms.

“It’s really you!” she cries, flinging her arms around Santana. “Puck, it’s really them!”

It seems to be the cue they were all waiting for. The spell breaks, and they rush toward each other, faster and faster until they meet in the middle, a weepy crash of too-thin bodies and skin crisped dark by too much sun.

“I missed you so much!” Sarah sobs into Santana’s shoulder.

Santana rubs circles on her back, not even trying to hold back her tears. “I missed you too.”

Puck wraps Kurt in a bear hug and lets go to hold him by his shoulders, looking him over with a critical eye. “I didn’t think you could get any skinnier,” he says.

“What happened to the Mohawk?” Kurt asks in reply, reaching up to tug on Puck’s hair.

“You look like crap,” Lauren tells Dave as she slaps him on the back.

He laughs. “Right back at you, and then some.”

“You haven’t been eating enough!” Margaret scolds Santana, putting her arms around both her and her daughter, who has yet to let go of her.

“Feel free to take over cooking any time,” Santana says.

Like their last conversation, none of them say what they mean: Are you okay? Will _you_ be okay? I’m so glad you’re alive. I can’t believe you made it too. We’ll help you get through this. We’ll all get through this.

Puck surprises Dave with a hug of the same strength and emotion that he gave Kurt. “You did right by them. Not bad, Karofsky. Not bad at all.”

He thinks about explaining it all to Puck, all the reasons why they did what they did, why they are who they are, but the look in his eyes makes him realize that Puck already gets it. “Yeah, well,” he says. “You can’t choose your family. And it’s Dave.”

“Dave.” Puck nods and shrugs. “Dave works.”

The door of the sedan slams, and they all jump and turn in unison to see the driver go around to the back to retrieve their suitcases.

Santana pulls away from Margaret and Sarah to fiddle with the hem of her tee shirt, nervous again. “There are only three free bedrooms in the house,” she says, “But there’s another one in the outbuilding in the back, and if you don’t want to stay out there we can turn the study into another bedroom –”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lauren says. “We’re here. That’s kind of all that matters, don’t you think?”

“Now that you mention it, welcome home,” Kurt says.

“Yeah,” Puck says, looking up at the old house and blinking rapidly. “I guess we’re home.”


End file.
